Page:The Destruction of Poland - Toynbee - 1916.djvu/8

 by the Germans. A search was made from house to house for provisions, though no confiscations are reported. In the villages, however, they took away everything they could get hold of, while there is a 'prohibition against selling or transporting anything to the towns, except from the suburban districts, and that on payment of a special tax. This information is indirectly confirmed by the Dziennik Poznanski (a Polish paper published at Posen), where a few days, ago there appeared the following item of news: —

"'The petition of the Warsaw industrialists for setting the factories at work again was met by a categorical refusal on the part of Besseler, who declared that anybody could find employment in Germany, whence Polish working men had already sent to Lodz savings to the amount of 40,000 marks!!!

"'People of means are endeavouring to obtain permits for leaving the kingdom (of Poland), hut their requests are not being granted.'"

These paragraphs are quoted from a letter, written on January 18th, 1916, by a trustworthy Polish correspondent to a friend in England. It is a general and categorical arraignment of German policy in those provinces of Russian Poland which have been invaded and occupied by the German troops in the course of the Eastern campaign. This policy of the enemy deserves our most searching regard, for it has an intimate bearing upon the deep issues at stake in the War—upon the ideals for which we are in arms ourselves, and upon those by