"O GIFT F s * A-J 'ojg DEC si ?n (Datf ha Chickm INTO FREE POLAND VIA GERMANY By MARTHA CHICKERING * ~> > , OVERSEAS DEPARTMENT NATIONAL BOARD OF THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 600 LEXINGTON AVENUE NEW YORK CITY I Q2O Foreword Miss Martha Chickering was leader of the first unit of Polish Grey Samaritans to be sent into Poland. Miss Chickering returned to the United States in November, iqiq, after establishing the unit in Warsaw. The Polish Grey Samaritans are the outcome of an idea suggested by Madame Laura G. de Turczynowicz when she came to the Y. W. C. A. in 1917. Madame Turczynowicz urged that Polish girls in America should be given training which would fit them for reconstruction service in Poland. Her suggestion was adopted, and recruits were sought throughout the country. Polish ' drobaf ion courses were given in Cleveland, iTrenf.qn, Rochester, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh. ; ;Qut cf three hundred girls who took the probation courses, ninety qualified for the intensive course in the Polish Grey Samaritan School, equipped and opened on 53rd Street, New York City, October, iqiS. Two separate courses of study were planned: Course I included health education and physiology, industrial history, social problems, institutional visit- ing, systematized housekeeping, bookkeeping, cooking, arts and crafts, English, Polish, gymnasium. Course II included lecture work under the auspices of the School of Philanthropy, field work with the Charity Organization Society, child training with the Froebel League, health education, Polish, English, sys- tematized housekeeping, bookkeeping, cooking, gym- nasium. The School closed its term of study on the seventh of June, iqiq, with the graduation of seventy-five students. Miss Lois Downs, of the Y. W. C. A. International Institute of Pittsburgh, Mrs. Thyrza Barton Dean and Mrs. Josefa Kudlicka, a Polish American, had been sent previously to Poland to arrange for establishing a unit of Grey Samaritans in Warsaw. This unit, of twenty girls, sailed July 31, iqiq, in charge of Y. W. C. A. Secretaries, Miss Chickering, Miss Frances West, Miss Emily Graves, and Miss Stephanie Kozlowska. The last three secretaries remained in War- saw; Miss West as Recreation Director, Miss Graves as House Director, and Miss Kozlowska, who is a registered nurse, as Medical Director. A second unit of ten girls will sail on December 1 1 , i QIC), in charge of Miss Amy Tapping and Miss Augusta Mettel, a registered nurse. The Y. W. C. A., with the help of a $10,000 donation from the Polish Reconstruction Fund, pays for the train- ing, the transportation, the equipment and the main- tenance (for four and one-half months) of these girls. At the end of the four and a half months' period the Polish Government, through the Central Children's Committee, will assume responsibility for them. This Committee was first called into being by the American Relief Administration, but was later taken over by the Ministry of Public Health, a department of the Polish Government. 44420? I H co 1 T> J3 u J-> 2 W o (O co co I ' O "S co I CO V H , < ' _ - - - - INTO FREE POLAND VIA GERMANY By MARTHA CHICKERING N JULY of this year, after months of intensive training and impatient waiting, twenty Polish Grey Samaritans (accompanied by three Y. W. C. A. counsellors and myself) at last turned their faces toward the land of their ancestors. Tales of the sufferings of Poland, especially among the children, had poured into America and tugged at the heart strings of these Polish- American girls. After the armistice was signed Mr. Herbert Hoover had cabled his workers in America that he could not go away and leave the children of Europe as they were. The Children's Relief Committee was formed and Poland was named as the place of greatest need for children's work. Here was the opportunity for which the Polish Grey Samaritans had eagerly waited the opportunity to give of themselves and of all they had learned in the service of their parent land. Mr. Hoover warmly en- dorsed the plan to bring a unit of Grey Samaritans to Warsaw, and we set sail on July 3 ist on the French liner, Rochambeau. As we passed the Statue of Liberty, the girls sang a Polish song and the Star Spangled Banner. How many times in the eventful weeks ahead we turned back in memory to the Statue and there were days when she Page Five < c c t c c c c c C f c ( C , TJ 2 c O T) t 8 Into Free Poland Via Germany seemed a long way off. Days in which we struggled with the beginning of Polish while the girls did the same with French, passed quickly, and we reached Paris expecting to proceed immediately to Warsaw. But c'est I' armistice! DIFFICULTIES OF JOURNEY Travelling to Poland just wasn't done in such large groups apparently. We heard of many ways to get to Poland we might go to England and work up to Copen- hagen and thence in time find something going to Danzig. Or, we might go around by Trieste and perhaps get a train to Vienna and in time get to Warsaw. Or, if we would break up in small groups, we might, in the course of several weeks get ourselves to Warsaw on the very overworked Orient Express the so-called "diplomatic train." But as a unit twenty-four at a time never! While we were w r aiting a weary month in Paris, I divided the girls into groups of four and sent them to visit some of the battlefields of France Rheims, Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood that they might become somewhat accustomed to the tragedy there before seeing the suffering and devastation in their own country. Many of the girls had had brothers at Belleau Wood, and after they returned from these trips they would come to me in my room and pour out the stories of the day, and through all their talk ran their idealism for America. At last, through the courtesy of the Polish Typhus Mission, we were started from Coblenz straight across Germany in a German freight train. The Continental Y. M. C. A. had been good enough to detail Mr. Wag- Page Seven to 60 fi . o .O I a w I O ca O < c Into Free Poland Via Germany goner, an American Y. M. C. A. man on his way to Poland, to go with us as escort. It would be hard to pay enough tribute to his tireless interest and care. Fifty- four cars we were first, box cars, then flat cars, carrying debusing machines, traction engines and Fords, and there, at the end, the Polish Grey Samaritans tucked into two compartment cars with their trunks in a tired box car! It was not exactly travelling de luxe, and food and water had to be snatched and passed at stops. But it was certainly novel, particularly as the girls decided that sitting on the Fords was the real way to travel, and the peasants in southern Germany will not soon forget the freight train that carried automobiles on flat cars, with girls in grey uniforms on the drivers' seats. Then came the Polish border! Here was Poland free Poland after a year and a half of work and waiting, and weeks of travel just over the line! GERMANY But the German Empire or rather Republic had its own ideas on the subject. Incidentally, it isn't always easy to remember that Germany is a republic when she has never taken the trouble to change her postage stamps from the pre-war "Deutsches Reich," and when one has confronted a German officer wearing the Iron Cross of Emperor William and directing soldiers of the republic. But let that pass! The German Republic had its own ideas about letting us into Poland. Our freight was not paid any farther the border had been moved eighteen kilometers east (by Germany) since we left Coblenz Page Nine >> 4-> "ra CO 2 "o % Into Free Poland Via Germany the German engine could not take us farther, because it could not be trusted across the Polish border, etc. There were many reasons given us but no engine; and we were helpless. So while the American captain in control of the train argued and expostulated, we lived in German freight yards, under guard, for five days and nights, cooking our food by the rails with the help of an American mess- sergeant who was one of the ten doughboys on the train. Much fun the girls made out of it, too but not all fun. For behind the fun was concealed an anxiety which never left us, that the Germans might not be considerate of the girls, if they were known to be Polish, so we allowed no Polish spoken and no use of Polish names. On the track next us was an armored train, with machine guns and two big Austrian 75's always with steam up, ready to go forth in pursuit of Poles if the constantly threatening border trouble should flare up. It was a highly sug- gestive neighbor. What did we see in Germany? Peaceful fields, houses with all the bricks in regular sequence forming walls and roofs instead of ruined heaps, as in parts of France and most of Poland, and some barefoot women and children. We were told there was hunger in the big cities, but that there was such hunger as we saw in Warsaw, I find it hard to believe. In one place, the officers of the soldiers who guarded us put on civilian clothes and went home at night. We were told that these men were not soldiers- only volunteers. Perhaps that is Germany's way of keep- ing one million men under arms! One cannot tell much of a country by crossing it in three days and then living five days in its freight yards; but one cannot come out Page Eleven s I o 4) u 4> t 03 Into Free Poland Via Germany of France, cross Germany and enter Poland without sad comparisons, and one cannot see the growing assurance of Germans as one goes east without asking, "What does this mean for Poland? Has Germany forgotten so soon that she was beaten last year?" POLAND Finally, an engine came and we crossed the border into Poland free Poland! Polish soldiers in Polish uni- forms were at the first station, and the girls saw the dream of generations of Poles realized at last. Austrian soldiers, German soldiers, Russian soldiers had been common enough in Poland, but the girls had seen Polish soldiers only in secret drill the secret drills through which they hoped some day to overthrow the oppressor. It was a day never-to-be-forgotten, and worth the long suspense a triumphal ride across Posen, and finally into Warsaw. I think of Poland as a plain (there are very beautiful mountains in the south, but most of Poland is flat) with far horizons, woods that push straight up into the sky, roadside crosses that climb up and up like the woods plain, austere, aspiring crosses, not ornate like most of Europe's shrines and peasant folk with eyes that made more than one American say to me, "I have never seen so many kind eyes as in Poland." All of this, Poland, innately, is. Above all, Poland is a land of brave men and devoted women eager patriots all and the Polish Government is making wonderful strides in the face of terrific obstacles. There are a few facts Americans should know about the Poland of to-day. Page Thirteen u s: o 4J GO CO