tern and western
Europe went on unabated and the peaceful symbolism of the Christmas ship
was soon forgotten in the daily recurrence of battle and bloodshed.
AWFUL CONDITIONS IN POLAND

While the frightful state of Belgium commanded the sympathy of the
civilized world in the winter of 1914-15, the conditions in Poland
were even worse. At the end of March the great Polish pianist, Ignace
Paderewski, paid a visit to London on behalf of the suffering Poles
and his efforts resulted in the formation of an influential relief
committee. Among the members were such men as Premier Asquith,
ex-Premier Balfour, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd-George, Cardinal
Bourne, archbishop of Westminster; Admiral Lord Charles Beresford and
the Russian and French ambassadors. An American woman, Lady Randolph
Churchill, also took an active part in the work of the committee, which
soon succeeded in raising a large sum for the relief of the most urgent
distress in Poland. While in London on his mission of mercy, Mr.
Paderewski said:

"Is it the death agony or only the birth pangs? That is the question
which every Pole throughout the world is asking himself as tragedy
follows tragedy in the long martyrdom of our beloved nation. You have
only heard the details of Belgium, but I tell you they are as nothing
with what has happened in Poland.

"The scene of operations in Poland is seven times larger than that of
Belgium, and she has had to endure seven times the torture. Remember,
the battle of Europe is being fought in the east, not in the west, and
while the tide of battle has reached a sort of ebb along the trenches
about the frontiers of Alsace and Flanders, the great waves roll
backward and forward from Germany to Russia and break always on Poland.

"Our country, in fact, is just as Belgium was called--the cockpit of
Europe, and it may now be called the battlefield of the world, if not of
civilization.

"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