“The German newspapers print articles declaring that among the Russian Jews the Germans find reliable allies who, besides supplying them with food, are often the best and unpaid spies, ready to enter any service injurious to the cause of Russia, and that in German victory the Jews see their salvation from Imperial oppression and Polish persecution. Similar information continues to come in from the army. In order to protect the army from the harmful activities of the Jewish population, the Commander-in-Chief has ordered that the forces of occupation take hostages from among the Jewish population, warning the inhabitants that in case of treacherous activities on the part of any one of the local inhabitants not only during the period of our occupation of a given inhabited point, but also after our leaving it, the hostages will be executed, which order is to be carried out in case of necessity. Upon occupation of inhabited points, careful searches are to be made to find out whether there are any arrangements for wireless telegraphy, signaling, pigeon stations, underground telegraphs, and so forth, and the full penalty of the law is to be meted out to anyone connected with this. Reference: Telegram by General Oranovsky of this year under No. 3432. Signed, Chief of the Fortified Region. General of the Cavalry, BOBYR.” This order was issued from the press at six o’clock in the evening, December 2, 1914, and immediately proved profitable to the dregs of the Russian soldiery, as was demonstrated at a court martial held in Lomza, where it was proven that three members of a signal corps had “planted” a telephone in the motion picture theater of a Jew named Eisenbiegel, and had then arrested him and demanded 5,000 roubles blackmail. In the course of the trial it developed that =one of the men was responsible for the hanging of no less than seventeen innocent Jews as spies solely because they were unable or unwilling to pay the blackmail demanded by him.=[31] Even the loyalty of Jewish soldiers was officially questioned. Order No. 1193 of the General Staff, dated April 27–May 10, 1915, commands all the troops “To watch the Jewish soldiers—especially their readiness to surrender as prisoners—and in general, their entire conduct.” But the publication and circulation of orders like these reacted disastrously upon the Russian arms. By branding the entire Jewish population as traitorous the military authorities encouraged the Poles to fabricate new slanders, the spread of which only served to heighten the distrust of the populations and to make the fighting area of Poland a quagmire for the Russian armies. The troops did not know whom to trust or distrust. Instead of fighting on friendly ground, welcomed and supported by the moral and economic resources of the civilian population, the Russians fought on ground undermined by hatred, dissension and distrust.