IN THE LAND OF THE UNWASHED.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14026, 7 April 1920, Page 1

IN THE LAND OF THE UNWASHED.

(By L. A. Jones.) 1 have returned from beyond of civilisation, from a land fought and refoiight over during the great- war, and, since -the peace, harried, and devastated as many times a country once consisting of prosperous farming' villages, now burnt to the ground, the inhabitants of which live in holes dug in the earth.

Typhus, Spanish influenza, and bubonic plague rage, unabated. No food leaches this wildnerness, no medical supplies comfort the sick and dying. It is a no man's land this' country beyond Tarnopol up to Kamenetz-PodoKki, fifty miles north-east of ' Czernowit£. , Dis-. puted by Poles and Ukranians, now united' against a common foe, it is threatened by the Bolsheviks. After Tarnopol, . railroad transport ceases, and -the traveller must- take, sledges over miles and miles of bleak, snow-covered land. Villages are few and far between, ', and three out of five are charrecL ruins. In those where habitations exist some attempt has been made by the American Red Cross 10 check disease. . - Americans had 1 come to these villages t6 .reach the* inhabitants' sanita: -tion. They ,had shown them how 'to rid themselves ol : the little insect that causes typhus. At first the villagers took to these baths,- until an old mail protested against being- forcibly washed. The case • was referred to War-, saw, where it was held that there was' 110 law 'in Poland to make the people take baths. So a brief period_ of cleanliness gave way to old fasmons and habits. Meanwhile- typhus, Spanish influenza, and bubonic pleague are spreading slowly but surely westward. Past Ketchlin. some .200 miles due southeast of Kieff, is a: fair-sized village by name Outchshifferoff. Until a few weeks ago it was inhabited by 2000 souls. Now it is deserted. More than half- the inhabitants lie dead within its. walls. The rest have fled.

An appalling stench greets the traveller as he approaches the confines of the village. In a vacant building plot near the Mayor's office a large pit had been dug; into which the bodies of the. villagers had been carelessly filing, as they died from tvphus. No attempt had been made to pay the last rites due to the dead. Men, women, and children- were piled 011 top of one another. _

The population, of this region have banded themselves into little republics, ready to take up arms against all and every comer. As ninny,, as six little republics exist in an area covered by a hundred square miles. Poles, Ukranians, and Bolsheviks are their enemies. They owe allegiance to no one, War sweeps, past them from time to time. Conquered and defeated a lite deem- them not worth the trouble to molest. ~ They have arms and ammunition in plenty, captured, .-or left behind- by various combatants, but they are .fast dying, out.- They are powerless- before disease. -