use this rare opportunity,
make themselves leaders and dictators of these groups, organize new
communities, which they rule with a strong hand, make laws, inflict
punishments, and impose their will just as they please. That makes it
necessary for the German authorities to interfere promptly and to
bring order and authority to bear on these insecure conditions. The
population is registered and no one is allowed to immigrate or to
emigrate without the proper papers.

"Of course, there are also good, carefully tended main roads besides
the bad country paths, and some of them are even paved for miles. One
of these runs right straight from the south toward the Polish city of
Cholm. For miles one can see this road, which looks like a ribbon that
grows narrower and narrower all the time; in the background is a
forest, through and beyond which the road runs. At the farther end of
the forest, on the shoulders of a hill, are the white buildings of the
monastery of the Russian bishopric of Cholm. Only when one comes
within a few hundred steps of these buildings does one see the low,
long, stretched-out little town in line with the ridge of the hills
that drop away to the north....

"A little farther on, to the northwest of this little country town, is
the larger, rich city of Lublin. There all the advantages of
civilization are in evidence: street cars, electric lights, department
stores, coffee houses. But here, too, war, want, and misery have left
their impression on everything: old men, women, children in rags,
asking for shelter and stretching out their thin arms for bread. On
all the squares troops pass and cross each other, delaying the
traffic. There are Germans and Austro-Hungarians in long columns and
then again a long line of Russian prisoners of war, marching to work.
Among the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen only rarely some figures
remind one of the fact that this is Eastern Europe: tall, thin Jews in
their long caftans and Jewish women with their unnatural wigs; male
and female beggars there are in great numbers, and they are so hungry
looking and ragged, so deep-eyed and sickly, that one can hardly
manage to swallow one's food in their vicinity, if one happened to
have chosen a seat on the terrace of one of the hotels.

"A few days later Brest-Litovsk was taken. Behind the troops that
stormed the fortifications during the night and thus forced the fall
of the city, pressed from early morning great masses of the