Page:The Destruction of Poland - Toynbee - 1916.djvu/10

 a million other workers had congregated, further north, round the mills and factories of Lodz. These thriving centres of Polish industry had sprung up between industrial Germany and the boundless markets of the Russian Empire, and they were favoured in competition, not only by their closer geographical proximity, but by the shelter of the Russian tariff wall, which gave them an additional preference against imported German wares. Dombrova, Sosnovitse, and Lodz had long been the eyesores of Betithen, Elberfeld and Chemnitz, when the advance of the German armies in November, 1914, brought these" districts definitely within the German lines. That was a year ago, and since then the Germans have rounded off their Polish acquisitions by the occupation of Warsaw. In what fashion have they used their power? The Roman precedent is double-edged. Are they organising Poland as the Romans organised Britain and Gaul, or are they annihilating her like Capua and Carthage?

When We turn to the evidence, we find "organisation" the official order of the day. Perhaps it Was not very happily exemplified by the first acts of the invaders on Polish soil. At the frontier town of Kalish, for instance, the Prussian commander summoned the mayor and corporation from their duties to set them lying, face downwards and with revolvers at their heads, in the public street; and he disorganised their city still further by an artillery bombardment—three days' gunnery practice upon a civilian population of 50,000 souls. This was at