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Show ('WHOLE TOWNS j ARE WIPED OUT j in Poland and Peasants Beg- sing for Food. I WASHINGTON, April 2 Widespread Wide-spread suffering and dUtrep throughout through-out eastern and southeastern Poland I arc described in a cablegram from Warsaw received today by the Amer-I Amer-I lean Red Cross headquarters here from a Red Cross mission which had just ' returned from an eight hour tour of inspection during which it had covered 1500 miles and distributed food, clothing cloth-ing and medical supplies in twenty cities ci-ties and numerous villages. The members of the Red Cross mission mis-sion were said to have found the population pop-ulation practically without any of the necessities of life and disease prevalent preva-lent everywhere. Thousands were sick and dying from epidemic?, of typhus, ty-phus, smallpox and trachoma, while; whole towns were reported to have been practically wiped out by the disease. dis-ease. "In many of the isolated villages starving peasants lined the roadside and begged for food," the cablegram stated. "For weeks they had been) living on an Imitation bread made from potato peelings, dirty rye and the bark of trees, but when the Red Cross arrived the supply of these ingredients had been exhausted. "The greatest suffering and destitution destitu-tion was encountered in Pinsk. situated sit-uated in the unhealthy Pripet marshes two hundred miles east of Warsaw, in four years teh population of Pinsk has been reduced from 50.000 to 25,000 and 'of the latter 500. are down with ty-i ty-i phus, lacking medical attendance and 'proper nourishment. Disease and hunger were found in every house .vis-, .vis-, Ited. An inspection of i the orphan 'asylum disclosed sixty children afflicted afflict-ed with typhus. "The direst misery was located In a i little village in the Kowel district I nhont eight miles behind the Polish lines. Practically every one of the. 120 persons remaining of the original I population of looo were ding of starvation star-vation or disease." As the members of the mission were the first Americans Been in thOS9 cities ci-ties and villages since the beginning of the war they were besieged by ihe, natives for news of relatives In ihe United States, the cablegram stated.) The workers offered to forward letters i to the United States and about one I I thousand were presented. |