The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1919-10-20
Unbelievable Conditions Found
in Territory East of
River Bug.
DISEASE AND HUNGER STAY
Red Cross and Jewish Relief Commit.
tee Working Hand in Hand to
Help ufferers-Frcsh Cloth
ing Dire Need

served until recently as a boundary of
the bolshevik fighting is today a
boundary of another kind.
Its eastern shore bounds on one side
| the hungriest and most diseased and
the most stricken territory in the world
| today. Five million people are at the
| point of starvation east of the River
Bug, according to figures given out by
| the American Jewish Relief commit
tee and compiled by the American Red
Cross and American Jewish Relief
agents great number of them are
Jews. The war has left 100000 des-
titute and stricken Jews in Eastern
Europe utterly helpless, in many cases
i'll, in every case hungry and de-
pendent.
East of the River Bug these people
are living in devastated houses. in
stalls of old stables on roofless plat
forms built for refugee families. one
family to platform. in old freight
cars, in holes in the ground or under
the open sky. They are weak from
many months of semi-starvation. for
they have gone for five years without
one square meal They are still ter
ror-stricken from the war. Their num-
Der is being reduced every day by
series of the most terrible epdemics
that ever swept any section of the
world
Typhus, Cholera and Smallpox.
Typhus. cholera and smallpox are all |
raging in the territory east of the |
River Bug. The first and most gen
eral of these epidemics is carried sim
ply by body lice. At least one mem
Der out of every fifth or sixth family |
is stricken with some form of it. as is
inevitable among a people clad in five
yearold rags, people who have not had
a bath with soap or change of cloth
ing since the beginning of the war No
estimate of the actual number of those
smitten with typhus in Poland has yet
been compiled, but it probably is great
err than in Siberia. where the American
Red Cross found 100000 cases.
Dirt and malnutrition are the two
great causes of the epidemic of dis
ease. All through Poland may be (
found children eight or ten years old
no larger than youngsters half their
age ordinarily are. Two out of three
infants do not survive their first year
of life The average child in the ter
ritory east Of the Bug river has never +
tasted milk. even mothers milk Amer /
lean Red Cross investigators say that '
an abnormal number of children are e
born blind because of the malnutrition t
of their mothers. American Jewish c
Relief investigators discovered a new I
eye disease that had attacked thou
sands of children, beginning with con-
slant blinking and ending in total
blindness. resulting when long con-
-inued starvation had affected the ;,
muscles of the eye. a.
So the great eypanse of 1.-The de- |,
)artment of the East" which sounds b
Ike any other part of the map to the
PEOPLE of the United States is a will a
lerness of horror and desolation to the A
workers in Poland who are ?
amiliar with the unbelievable suffer- u
ng there In the battle against dis - =.
ase and starvation which is going on ~
n the territory east of the Bug river, r.
he American Red Gross is fighting P
he former, with medicines and physt til
ians and nurses and attempts toward
leanliness. while the American Jew. Al
III relief workers have entered the "
SITS against hunger with soup kitchens al
nd milk stations. and Children's Re- III
eff bureaus, established here and ~
lere, all through the vast stretch of
,rritory.
Fresh Clothing the Dire Need
IT all the people in the territory east bu
the Bug river could be fed properly WI
once, disease would soon disappear, wy
1ysicians in the afflicted region say. 70
they could replace the rags which 80
icy have worn since the beginning Of he
e war with fresh clothing, the cpl te,
,mics would cease to spread. If their
wing places could be made habitable or,
I'd clean, it would no longer be as 1t sta
today the most desolate expanse Of ne
nd in the world. 1t is toward this eq
ID that the two great organizations. acl
e of Gentiles and the other Of Jews, ~
e working hand in hand difference -,
creed forgotten. in the great practi
| need that they face.
The Red Cross personnel has been :
,bIed in the last few weeks In this me
strict. American Jewish Relief on
encies are feeding hundreds of chill SIS
en- there.
- UN