And so through the night of the festival of the Three Kings we drove back across the desolate battlefields. At Kovel we said good-bye to Christine Zduleczna. We left her in her mouldy room, in the dingy den of the Bellevue, which looks more like a thieves' kitchen than a hotel. She parted with us with a cheery smile—she loved her people and her work. If she had her choice, while the need was so great, she wouldn't be anywhere else. But I, for one, felt a coward in leaving her alone to carry such a burden. We struck the bleak, interminable road which leads through Brest-Litovsk to civilisation. Our lamps as we parted the wall of darkness, picked out the crosses of silver birch, the black and white verst poles, the graveyards and the humpy ruined houses. They revealed them to us one by one, beckoning them out of oblivion, making each tragedy seem separate and the more significant. It was bitterly cold. We huddled closer and shivered in our rugs and furs. Sometimes we dozed in a nodding fashion. But whenever we roused, like figures of grief on a frieze of blackness, we saw the straggling forms of outcast travellers, their feet swathed in rags, journeying in search of bread. Very often they were boys and girls, above the age of fourteen whom so far the American Relief has not had sufficient funds to rescue. They were journeying in quest of bread on the night, when according to tradition, the Three Kings should have been riding from the East to bring them help. CHAPTER XVII—DOES POLAND WANT PEACE? Does Poland want peace? It is a question which has to be answered in the affirmative if either philanthropists or nations are going to interest themselves in restoring Poland to a sound financial footing. In order to obtain an authoritative answer, I approached Prince Sapieha, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Rather to my amazement he was not at all elusive, but gave me the most convincing Arguments for Poland's peace desires that I have yet heard.