"It is only perhaps we Poles who have known to its utmost depths what this war has really meant. It is not only that there are 10,000, human beings on the verge of starvation, nay, actually perishing; there is worse than that.
"Remember that both Belgium and Poland are still under the yoke. The Russians, it is true, occupy some fifteen thousand miles of our country, but this is really nothing, for the Germans occupy five-sixths of it, and the desolation passes all comprehension.
CALLS IT COMPULSORY SUICIDE
"As to actual battles, I can hardly speak of them. It is torture even to think of them. Only consider! Our one nation is divided as it were into three sections, which were thrust each against the others to work out their destruction. It is parricide! It is fratricide, nay suicide! Compulsory suicide! That is what it is!
"Listen to what it means to us all. I was told by a man from Austria that an army doctor, a Pole by birth, who was deputed to go over the Austrian battlefields and verify identification marks on the bodies, found among the 14,000 dead hardly any but Polish names. He looked in vain for any others, and in the end went mad with horror at the thought of it. Another story that came to me the other day told of another case of the tragedy of Poland which is almost too terrible for the human mind to contain. The incident took place during a charge. Both armies had been ordered to attack, and the Poles, as usual, were in the front lines. As they met in the shock they recognized each other.
"One poor fellow, as he was struck through by a bayonet, cried out in his death agony, 'Jesu Maria! I have five children! Jesu Maria!' The words went as straight to the brain of his conqueror as a dagger to the heart, and killed his reason. Somewhere among the madhouses of Europe there is a lunatic. He is not violent, but he never laughs. He only wanders about with the words of his dying victim, 'Ah, Jesu Maria! I have five children. Jesu Maria!'
"The promise of Grand Duke Nicholas that Poland shall be a nation once again went straight to the very heart of every one of our 25,000, fellow countrymen. That one promise has been sufficient to change the whole mentality of the nation and fill their souls with new hope. It has cleared up any doubt that might have existed in the minds of the Poles in Austria and Prussia as to what it is that the allies are fighting for—namely: the principles of nationality for which we have suffered, ah! how many centuries!"
MILLIONS OF POLES DESTITUTE
The ruin wrought by war in Belgium affected 7,000,000 people. In Poland more than twice that number have been rendered destitute. Not less than 15,000 villages have been laid waste, burned, or damaged in Russian Poland alone. The loss in property has been estimated at $500,000,000, but may reach double that sum.
In Galicia the conditions are reported to be equally appalling, though the smashup has not been as complete, because the Russians have been able to maintain their positions more permanently than they have in the district west and northeast of the Polish capital.