Why does Poland starve? The question needs answering. In our secret hearts we people who have plenty, are inclined to suspect that the nations who suffer are purchasing their hunger with idleness. I do not pretend that the situation at Marki answers all the question, But certainly the reasons for the hunger there apply to very many towns which once were hives of industry.

Marki lies six miles to the east of Warsaw in the direct path of a Russian advance. The country through which one approaches it is still marred by defenses and barbed wire entanglements, hastily prepared last summer to hold up the Bolshevist attack. Before the war it was a Polish Boumeville or Port Sunlight—a successful experiment in housing workmen in healthy surroundings. The village centred about a woollen mill, which supported three thousand employees. The employees had homes in model dwellings, rented to them at a moderate figure. They were provided with an up-to-date school, a hospital, bath-houses, etc., and were in an exceptional state of contentment. When the great strike occurred in 1905 and 1906, they refused to leave their work and only joined at length under threats and at the revolver's point. The owners of the mill were originally British, though circumstances have made it wise for them to become Polish citizens. They were residents of Marki and one of them, with whom I spoke today, still retains his Lancashire dialect. Since 1884 the mill had been manufacturing yarn, until in 1914 it had attained a weekly output of one hundred thousand pounds. It traded under the name of E. Briggs Brothers and Company. Then came the war, the general dislocation and the end of prosperity.

Marki was in Russian Poland. In 1916 it was captured by the Germans. The mill became a prison-camp for interned Russian soldiers and industry was at a standstill. Obviously, when there was a crying need for woollens, it was bad economy to allow this intricate mass of valuable machinery to stand idle. A German manufacturer was sent down, with a view to setting it going. His plans were almost completed, when the Roh Stoff Abteilung got wind of what was happening. The Roh Stoff Abteilung was a company organized for the systematic looting of captured territories. It paid the German Government a lump sum for its privileges and an additional percentage on its profits. It dispatched an agent to Marki to make a report on the opportunities, with the result that the compatriot manufacturer was ousted and the wrecking of the machinery commenced.

Today one of the partners, Mr. Charles Whitehead, took me over what was left after the Roh Stoff Abteilung had completed its work. All the boilers, motors, piping, belting, brass and copper parts have been torn out. Even the cork that insulated the roofs has been removed. The bulk of the machinery still stands, but until the stolen parts have been put back the whole is rendered useless. To replace these parts is no easy task when six hundred Polish marks are only worth a dollar and most of civilized Europe is in disrepair. The damage done was so senseless. The rewards gained from the sale of the jumbled loot were so disproportionately small as compared with the expense of its replacement. And so the model village of Marki is a model no longer. The houses are bare of furniture; the furniture has been sold for food. The inhabitants are in rags; they shiver and clutch themselves in a desperate endeavour to withstand the wintry chill. They have neither shoes nor stockings. They die like flies in their model dwellings. Because of one ruthless act, three thousand willing workers are idle and all the women and children who are dependent on them starve. I do not quote this instance to make the Germans appear sinners above all men. Ruthlessness goes hand in hand with war. You may find the same wilfulness of destruction on all the five fronts on which Poland has been attacked. Cattle, which could not be carried off, have been butchered. Houses have been burned. Pictures, art-treasures and things irreplaceable have been smashed to atoms.

But to get back to Marki, how have these three thousand ex-employees and their dependents managed to survive until now? All of them have not survived; the youngest, oldest and weakest have perished. Of the remainder some are in the army. Some have moved away. Others go to work in Warsaw; they have to leave Marki at five in the morning to tramp the six miles to the city and do not get back till nine at night. The women have discovered an illegal method of eking out a livelihood. Flour is Government controlled; it is forbidden to bake it and traffic in it as bread. But the regulated price of flour is so low that the farmer often prefers to feed the wheat to his cattle. By walking fifteen miles into the country, the women of Marki, are often able to strike a bargain with a peasant. They bring their treasure home, convert it into bread, walk another, six miles in the opposite direction and hawk it in Warsaw. The police are on the outlook for such petty criminals. Some of them get caught, their merchandise is confiscated and they are sent to prison. From being honest women they become gaol-birds.

As a model-village you could scarcely imagine any sight more hopeless than the Marki of today. The stillness of death is in the streets. The chimneys are breathless. The people are lean, famine-fevered shadows. There is no laughter. No stir. Funerals are too common to cause excitement. While the machinery rots in the mill, men's souls rot in their bodies. From a place which was once throbbing with energy the incentive to endeavour has seeped away. There is no possibility to work; and if there were, there is not the strength to undertake it.

And yet there is one building which shelters a gleam of hope—the school-house in which the American Relief has established its children's feeding station. It was Mr. Whitehead, part-owner of the pillaged mill, who led me to it. “If you have any ability,” he said, “to make conditions known, I wish you would tell the world what Marki owes to America. Six hundred children died of hunger in our village the year before the Americans came. Whatever happens to us older fellows, they have saved our rising generation. I am getting the money to patch up my machinery; if I live long enough, I shall have all of it running again. But shall I be able ito patch up the machinery of human bodies? My people are no more capable of working than my machinery is of running at present. Their strength has been looted. They must be repaired, just the same as the machinery in my mill.”

And what I saw on a small scale in Marki is true of the whole of Poland.