The Wanganui Herald. (Published Daily.) THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1917. OPPRESSED POLAND.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15135, 1 February 1917, Page 4

The Wanganui Herald. (Published Daily.) THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1917. OPPRESSED POLAND.

Sad and harrowing, indemj. are the details published in to-day’s cables Concerning the conditions of the unhappy j and oppressed Poles. All industries in Poland are dead, factories are closed, and the machinery sent to Germany, jiven the church bells are gone, to be , manufactured no doubt into war material. From Warsaw alone 100,000 have been sent into slavery, separated j from wives, fathers, and mothers, sisters and brothers. Despite this despotism and brutality, the spirit of the Poles is not broken: they still refuse to fight for their oppressor and his hypocritical promises of independence. The Poles are a martial nation; regiments from those parts of Poland that were long ago incorporated with other nations have, in spite of bad treatment, fought bravely for them, and there is little doubt that if they really trusted Ger-, many and believed she had a chance of winning, the Poles would respond to her call. But they know bow she has treated her "incorporated” Poles—though as a matter of fact these have v most stubbornly ' resisted incorporation in the past, Of the three nations that

have taken pieces of Poland, Germany baa behaved by far the most cruelly to tbe Poles. Austria has treated her Polish subjects comparatively well, but though Bussia is by no means guiltless in this matter, 90 unprejudiced Pole who had a choice free to that extent would hesitate between Bussia and Germany. The German and Austrian parts of Poland have long ago been conscripted pretty thin; but Bussia, partly, no doubt, because her need of human material has never been so great, and partly, perhaps, because Eussian Poland has been out of Bussia’s hands for a good while (though the saine thing would apply ae regards Austria to at leaet the eastern part of Galicia), never called up the younger classes of Poles, It is these—their total is put down at more than balf-a-million—-that Germany is seeking to entrap or enslave. Unable to secure their services by glozing promises of independence, Germany is now taking them by force, and in doing so inflicting upon them barbarous and inhuman practices. There will, however, he a day of reckoning, and Germany will find that the Poles and other enslaved raws will prove its undoing.