DEVASTATED POLAND 



By Frederick Walcott 



1WANT to impress upon you two 

 things — what the Prussian system 

 stands for, and what that system is 

 costing the world in innocent victims. 



You are all familiar, more or less, with 

 the story of Belgium. You can never 

 appreciate what that tragedy means until 

 you have seen it. I want to stop just a 

 moment in Belgium to give you two or 

 three figures to take away with you, and 

 pay a tribute to an organization that has 

 been supreme there ever since the war 

 began. 



You must remember that in Belgium 

 nearly five millions of people for many 

 months now have been completely desti- 

 tute and are getting their one meager 

 meal per day, consisting of approximately 

 three hundred grams of bread — a piece 

 of bread about as big as my fist — and a 

 half liter of soup — approximately a pint 

 of soup in 24 hours ; a nation, in other 

 words, whose sole living is obtained by 

 going up and standing in line from one 

 to three or four or five hours a day. to 

 wait, without shelter from the weather, 

 for one meager meal a day given to them 

 by charity. 



That undertaking has cost approxi- 

 mately fifteen millions of dollars per 

 month in cash for more than two years. 

 Ninety-five per cent of that money is 

 being contributed by the English and 

 French governments. 



It takes between 50,000 and 60,000 

 people, most of them volunteer Belgians 

 and French in Belgium and in that oc- 

 cupied territory of northern France, to 

 distribute this food ; and that great un- 

 dertaking is being supervised by a small 

 group of loyal Americans, who have been 

 working from the beginning without pay 

 under the leadership of an inspired 

 genius, Mr. Herbert C. Hoover. 



BORX AND BRED TO THE HARDENED HEART 



I went into Belgium to investigate con- 

 ditions, and while there I had opportuni- 

 ties to talk with the leading German 

 officials. Among others I had a talk one 



day with Governor General von Bissing, 

 who died three or four weeks ago, a 

 man 72 or 73 years old, a man steeped 

 in the "system," born and bred to the 

 hardening of the heart which that philos- 

 ophy develops. There ought to be some 

 new word coined for the process that a 

 man's heart undergoes when it becomes 

 steeped in that system. 



I said to him, "Governor, what are you 

 going to do if England and France stop 

 giving these people money to purchase 

 food?" 



He said, "We have got that all worked 

 out and have had it worked out for 

 weeks, because we have expected this 

 system to break down at any time." 



He went on to say, "Starvation will 

 grip these people in 30 to 60 days. 

 Starvation is a compelling force, and we 

 would use that force to compel the Bel- 

 gian workingmen, many of them very 

 skilled, to go into Germany to replace 

 the Germans, so that they could go to the 

 front and fight against the English and 

 the French. 



"As fast as our railway transportation 

 could carry them, we would transport 

 thousands of others that would be fit for 

 agricultural work, across Europe down 

 into southeastern Europe, into Mesopo- 

 tamia, where we have huge, splendid 

 irrigation works. All that land needs is 

 water and it will blossom like the rose. 



RIDDING THE LAND OF THE WEAK 



"The weak remaining, the old and the 

 young, we would concentrate opposite the 

 firing line, and put firing squads back of 

 them, and force them through that line, 

 so that the English and French could 

 take care of their own people." 



It was a perfectly simple, direct, frank 

 reasoning. It meant that the German 

 Government would use any force in the 

 destruction of any people not its own to 

 further its own ends. 



I had never thought in such terms. I 

 had read von Bernhardt and others, but 

 I did not believe them, and the whole 



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