Free trader-journal. (Ottawa, Ill.) 1916-1920, 1919-11-01
AMERICANS HELP
HUNGRY and ILL
Unbelievable Conditions Found
in Territory East Of
River Bug.
DISEASE AND HUNGER STAY
Red Gross and Jewish Relief Commit.
tee Working Hand IN Hand to
Help Sufferers--Fresh Cloth.
ina Dire Need

New York The River Bug, which
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 hungrest and most diseased and
the most stricken territory in the world
To-Day. 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. A great number of them are
Jews. The war has left 6.oOoO 900 DIES
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 a 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 mum
her Is being reduced every day by a
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
her out of every fifth or sixth family
is stricken with some form of II, as is
inevitable among a people clad in five
year-old rags, people who have not had
a bath with soap or change of cloth
Ing since the beginning of the war. Ne
estimate of the actual number of those
smitten with typhus in Poland has yet
been compiled, but ii probably is great /.
er 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 TINT
an abnormal number of children are
born blind because of the malnutrtion
of their mothers. American Jewish
Relief investigators discovered a new
eye disease that had attacked thou.
sands of children, beginning with con
slant blinking and ending in total
blindness, resulting when long con,
tinued starvation had affected the
muscles of the eye
So the great cxpanSe of 'the de
partment Of The East" which sounds
like any other part of the map TO the
people of the United States. is a will.
derneSS of horror and doSolatiOn TO the
American workers in Poland who are
familiar with the unbelievable suffer
ing there, In the battle against dis
ease ana starvation which is going on
in the territory east of the Bug river
the American Red Cross is fighting
the former, with medicines and phySl
clans and nurses, and attempts toWar6
cleanliness, while the American Jew
ish relief workers have entered th,
lists against hunger with soup Kitchen.
and milk stations. and Chlldreu's Re
lief bureaus, established here anr
there all through the vast stretch OF
territory.
Fresh Clothing the Dire Need.
If All the people in the territory e0Sl
Of the Bug river could be fed property
at once, disease would soon disappear
physicians in the afflicted region say
If they could replace the rags which
they have worn since the beginning OF
the war with fresh clothing. the cpl
denies would cease 70 spread II then
living places could be made habltablt
and clean 1t would no longer be rs il
Is today the most deeolatc eXpanSe ut
land in the world. II is toward TIL,
END that the Two great organizations
one Of G"ntlcS and the other of Jew,
are working hand IN hand difference
of creed forgotten. in the great practi
cal need that they face.
The Red Cross personnel has beer
trebled IN the last few weeks in This