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 mainta