Page:The Destruction of Poland - Toynbee - 1916.djvu/25

 case, and they took all conceivable measures for putting it to the test.

Life in Poland was to be made impossible. So it was planned, and so it has been done. Relief- work has been paralysed, resumption of short-time work in the factories has been countered by an official veto. Schemes have been quashed which aimed at meeting unemployment by starting public works. The Press Censorship at Lodz does not allow any plans for public works to be alluded to, and it suppresses the advertisements for workmen inserted by the factories, when they see an occasional chance of resuming activity for a few days. Everything is done to make Poland a country without a future and to deepen the atmosphere of despair, in town and country alike. The irreplaceable forests are being systematically cut down. (A special company has been formed for the exploitation of the timber). The Polish workman sees all turning to ruin around him, and the starvation of his wife and children is ever present with him at home.&hellip;

That is the pressure on the one hand, while on the other he is solicited and allured continually to choose the alternative course. The Polish labourer is not unfamiliar with Germany; he has gone to work in the years before the war at Beuthen and Elberfeld and Essen, and now there are German official and semi-official labour bureaux all over the country, promising him higher wages in Germany than he has ever had in his life. "The German authorities," writes a Polish correspondent, "are doing everything in their power to induce workmen