_A Masterful Tale of the Eastern Front_
_Told by M. C. della Grazie of Vienna_
No result of the war has been more pitiable than the suffering
inflicted on the subject races caught in its grip. These submerged
peoples have had to submit helplessly to the brutalities of both
sets of combatants. The Poles, the Ruthenians, the Ukranians, the
Slavs of Bohemia and Moravia, have fought with little heart for
Russia, Austria or Prussia, as the case might be. But the Jews
of the Polish Pale and of Galicia have had an even harder fate;
for while the men of military age have followed the flags of
their masters, the women, the children and the old men have been
obliged to face at home all the evils which travel in the wake of
war--disorder, violence, disease, spoliation and semi-starvation.
The following story is by M. C. della Grazie, a well known Viennese
writer. It makes a masterly use of a single, simple incident to
bring home the meaning of one of the war's most hopeless and
poignant tragedies. It was written at the time when the Russians
still occupied the greater part of the Austrian province of
Galicia. This translation, with editorial comment, is by William L.
McPherson in the _New York Tribune_.