The Holbrook news., 1918-10-04

- V
 r. c. Walcott, 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 Mir. Hoover in these invaded countries, has pictured in a graphic way the conditions he found among the people 1t was his duty to help. After describing the terrible condl- lions in Poland in 1916, the millions that were dying of starvation, the hundreds of thousands of defenseless people that had been ruthIessly cut down by the sword of the German con Queror, he says:
 In that situation, the German com mander Issued a 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 de or survive as the case may be. Leave your country which is destroyed, to work in Germany for it's 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. T l., f.. 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 a 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, higli-strung people. Death or slavery.
 When a Pole gave me that proclama- tion, I 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 must not for any cause jeopardlze the undertaking. I asked Governor Gen eral von Beseler, Can this be truer
 Really, l cannot say" he replied T have signed so many pr0clamationsI ask General Won Kries."
 So I asked General von Kries. ~Gen- eral, this is a civilized people. Can this be trueT t"Yes," he said. "it is true"-with an afr of adding, Why motif
 dared not trust myself to speak; 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 D condition in America as Mir. 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 ID France fail to defeat the soldiers of this murder empire. This fair c0un- try of ours would be made into GcS- man province; our people would be the slaves of the Junkers of Germany. subject to the beastly whins 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 dear. would be lost.
 TOT anything in the Hard uaro lino uoo WofzlovSr If