Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1919-10-31
AMERICANS HELP
HUNGRY AND ILL
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 Sufferers-Fresh Cloth
ina Dire Need.

New York.-The River Bug, which
served until recently as a boundary OF
the bolshevik fighting. is today
boundary Of another kind.
It's 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. A great number of them are
Jews. The war has left 100000 des-
titute and stricken Jews In Eastern
Europe utterly helpless, In many cases
Ill, 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 I'm 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-strcken from the war, Their num-
Der is being reduced every day by a
series Of the most terrible epidemics
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 1t, as Is
inevitable among a people clad I'm five
year-old 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 manutrition are the two
great causes of the epidemic of dis
ease. All through Poland may he
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
born blind because Of the malnutrition
of their mothers. American Jewish
! Relief investigators discovered 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 expanse Of "the de-
partment Of the East" which sounds
like any other part of the map to the
| people of the United States, Is will
derness of horror and desolation to the
! American workers in Poland who are
| familiar with the unbelievable suffer
ing there. In the battle against dis
ease and starvation which Is going on
| in the territory east of the Bug river
the American Red Cross is fighting
| the former, with medicines and physt
clans and nurses, and attempts toward
cleanliness, while the American Jew.
ish relief workers have entered the
lists against hunger with soup kitchens
and milk stations. and Children's Re
| lief bureaus, established here and
there, all through the vast stretch Of
territory.
Fresh Clothing the Dire Need.
II all the people in the territory east
Of the Bug river could be fed properly
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 to spread. If their
living places could be made habitable
and clean, II would no longer be as IL
is today the most desolate expanse of
| land In the world. 1t Is toward this
end that the two great organizations,
one of Gentiles and the other of Jews,
are working hand in hand, difference
of creed forgotten, in the great practi-
cal need that they face.
The Red Cross personnel has been
trebled in the last few weeks in this
district. American Jewish Relief
agencies are feeding hundreds of chill
dren there.