Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1918-08-24

F. c. Walcott, a member of the United States food administration, and during the time America was feeding the civilian populations of Belgium, Serbia and northern France an assist ant of MT. Hoover in these invaded countries, has pictured in graphic way the conditions he found among the people it was his duty to help. After describing the terrible cOndi- tions in Poland in 1916, the millions that were dying of starvation, the hundreds of thousands of defenseless people that had been ruthlessly cut down by the sword of the German con- queror, he says:
 In that situation, the German con- mander issued proclamation. Every able-bodied Pole was bidden to Ger many to work. If any refused. let no other Pole give him to eat, not so much as mouthful, under penalty of German military law.
 This is the choice the German gov ernment gives to the conquered Pole, to the husband and father of a starv- ing family: Leave your family or die or survive as the case may be. Leave your country which is destroyed, to work in Germany for its further de- struction. If you are obstinate, we shall see that you surely starve.
 Staying With his folk, he is doomed and they are not saved; the father and husband can do nothing for them, he only adds to their risk and suffering. Leaving them, he will be cut off from his family, they may never hear from him again nor he from them. Ger many will set him to work that Ger man workman may be released to fight against his own land and people, He shall be lodged in barracks, behind barbed wire entanglements, under armed guard. He shall sleep on the bare ground with single thin blan- ket. He shall be scantily fed and his earnings shall be taken from him to pay for his food.
 That is the choice which the Ger man government offers to a proud, sensitive, high-strung people. Death or slavery.
 When Pole gave me that proclama- tion, was boiling. But had to re- strain myself. I was practically the only foreign civilian in the country and wanted to get food to the people. That was what I was there for and I must not for any cause jeopardize the undertaking. I asked Governor Gen. eral von Beseler, "Can this be true"
 Really, cannot say" he replied. 'I have signed so many proclamations; ask General Won Kries."
 So asked General von Kries. "Gen- eral this Is a civilized people. Can this be truer
 "Yes," he said, lit is true"-with an air of adding, Why not?
 I dared not trust myself to speak; I turned to go. "Wait," he said. And he explained to me how Germany, official Germany, regards the state of subject peoples.
 It Is hard for us to imagine such e condition in America as MT. Walcott has described as existing in Hun-rid- den Poland, and yet that is just what would exist should our boys, and the boys of our allies, now fighting in France fail to defeat the soldiers of this murder empire. This fair coun- try of ours would be made into a Ger man prOvincei our people would be | the slaves of the Junkers of Germany, subject to the beastly whims of the officers of the German army. In no war in which America has ever en- gagged have the stakes been so great as in this present conflict. Should we, by any chance, lose; should the Hun, by any chance, win; our liberties, our happiness, everything Americans hold |