Produced by John Pobuda
The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw
Or In the Wake of War
Boy Scout Series Volume 20
By Colonel George Durston
The Disappearance
It was the fifth of August. Warsaw the brilliant, Warsaw the Beautiful,the best beloved of her adoring people, had fallen. Torn by bombs,wrecked by great shells, devastated by hordes of alien invaders, she layin ruins.
Her people, despairing, seemed for the greater part to have vanished inthe two days since the fatal third of August when the city was taken.
Many of the wealthiest of her citizens had taken refuge in the lowerpart of the city, leaving their magnificent palaces and residencessituated in the newer part to the flood of invading soldiers, who wentwith unerring directness to the parts containing the greatest comfortand luxury.
Warsaw is built in the midst of a beautiful plain mostly on the leftbank of the river Vistula. All the main part of the city lies close tothe river, and the streets are so twisted and crooked that it is almostimpossible to picture them. They wriggle here and there like snakes ofstreets. The houses, of course, are very old, and with their heavybarred doors and solid shutters, look very strange and inhospitable.
People, in a way, become like their surroundings. Here in these twisted,narrow streets are to be found the narrow, twisted souls of the worstelement in Poland; but the worst of them love their country as perhapsno other people do. To the last man and to the frailest woman, they areloyal to Poland. For them, it is Poland first, last and always.
In these low and twisted streets, the devastation was greatest and thepeople had scurried like rats to cover. A week before they had swarmedthe streets and crowded the buildings. Now by some miracle they hadgone, utterly disappeared. The houses were deserted, the streets empty.The destruction had been greatest in these crowded places, but many ofthe beautiful public buildings and state departments in the new partwere also in ruins, as well as a number of matchless palaces.
The people from the upper part of the city who had taken refuge in theholes along the river front, were for the most part a strange appearinglot. Some of them carried great bundles which they guarded with jealouscare. Others, empty handed, sat and shivered through the summernight-chills that blew from the river. Scores of little children clungto their mother's hands, or wandered trembling and screaming from groupto group, seeking their own people.
There was a general gathering of types. Nobles mixed with the poorest,meanest and most criminal classes, and mingled with their common sorrow.For the most part a dumbness, a silence prevailed. The shock of thenational disaster had bereft the people of their powers of expression.
Since 1770, Poland had been torn and racked by foes on every hand.Prussia, Austria and Russia envied her wealth, courage, and her fertileplains. Little by little her enemies had pressed across her shrinkingborders, wet with the blood of her patriot sons. Little by little shehad lost her cherished land until the day of doom August third, 1915.
Sitting, hiding in their desolated city, the people of Poland knew thattheirs was a country no longer on the map. Russia, Austria and Prussiaat least had met. There was no longer any Poland. For generations therehad been no Polish language; it was forbidden by her oppressors. Now thecountry itself was swallowed up. No longer on the changing map of theworld had