The conditions and extent of distress in towns, townlets and villages of Poland and of the Pale are being ascertained through delegates of the General Relief Committee working actively and energetically towards the organization of various forms of relief in the several districts. In a number of places the local Jewish community has readily joined in the relief work, doing its utmost to meet the demand for food, shelter, clothing; the local philanthropic and communal Jewish institutions thus becoming valuable agencies of the General Relief Committee. On the whole, however—particularly as far as Poland is concerned:—=the organization of assistance to the war sufferers is meeting with endless difficulties, due largely to the fact that the suffering population is in such a state of frantic terror, that many Jews do not even dream of applying to anyone for assistance. In many instances the first terror has given way to complete apathy.= Often our representatives have to seek these people out in their hiding places, to rouse them from their lethargy, to exercise moral pressure on the more prominent members of the community, before anything can be done for the sufferers. This attitude of the people becomes intelligible when we consider the conditions that they live in under ordinary circumstances—their poverty, their lack of education, the contempt they are accustomed to meet with on the part of the non-Jewish population. Similar conditions prevail in the Galician Provinces within Russian occupation: =“I found them huddling together in damp and dark cellars, half-naked, sick and starving”=—these are the words of one of our representatives who visited some of the places that had witnessed all the horrors of the war. =“They showed complete apathy, appeared to be in a trance of terror. Only a madman—he had become insane because of superhuman suffering—followed me into the street, shrieking for bread. I handed him a coin, but he threw it down and clamored for bread....”= The ever changing conditions of war, that open up new regions for relief work today, and close other districts tomorrow, that throw ever new crowds of sufferers upon public charity—these, to a large extent baffle all our efforts towards relief, destroying today what was organized yesterday. Add to this the peculiar circumstances of Jewish life in Russia, the unfavorable attitude of the authorities towards the Jewish population in the war area—and the difficulties that the organization of relief has to cope with will stand out in their full significance.