to leave for Germany. They almost force them to go. The workmen, however, are not willing to leave the country, and the majority of them go to work on the land. People who go to Prussia for work must have a certificate. A man. may only leave his (Prussian) employer when he has obtained another post. If he tries to return home, the Prussian authorities throw all sorts of difficulties in his way."
A whole nation has perhaps never before been subjected to such systematic temptation, and it is small wonder if there has been compliance here and there. "Warsaw," writes the "Nowa Reforma" on November 7th, "is getting depopulated on account of the incredibly high prices and the economic stagnation." Yet the migration to the countryside must have accounted for most of this depopulation, for the migration from Warsaw to Germany has been extraordinarily small. At the end of November, 1915, no more than 2,639 Warsaw workmen had answered the German call[1]; 8,000 more had been beaten up from Piotrkov, Pabianitse and Lask; 21,000 working men and 1,702 working women have gone to Germany from Lodz, and 2,427 persons of the educated class—less than 25,000 people in ail from a district where the cessation of industry has cut off the subsistence of 500,000 souls. If we add 20,000 emigrants from the coal-district, we have enumerated them all; and it will be obvious at once that the German bid for Polish labour has been a miserable fiasco.
The Germans hoped high things from their
- ↑ Russkoyé Slovo," Dec. 1st,
