3685106405

z

Specifically, they claimed to have information that the British Prime Minister had very strongly urged the Polish Premier to reach agreement, and had pointed to the conseąuences that would inevitably overtake those who tried to play a role similar to that of the Tsarist emigres in the twenties. Results of the intransigents' spurt of alarmed activity were soon seen.

The Warsaw    ion

First came the Warsaw "operation". The thing was at the outset simple, though it later was complicated by facts which we shall report in their place. Froro the point of view of those around General Sosnkowski and the whole of the intransigents, it oould not fail--for the morę it failed the morę it succeeded. If, by some outside ohance, this entirely unco-ordinatea operation really had succeeded in cstabli3'ning General Bor in a couple of Government buildings at the moment when the Red Army moved in, then Bor and his backers would have appealed to 3ritain and America to recognise thera as the "sole liberators" of the Polish Capital. If, as almost inevitably happened, an operation ordered front a West London hotel room without the slightest notification of, or oo-ordination with, the Soviet High Commar.d, failed, then it could be declared that it had failed because the Soviet High Coramand, which knew nothing about it, had "let it down". That, with the aid of a large section of the British Press, and in particular the Catholic Press, could produce a "deterioration in the atmosphere" and perhaps make the threatened progress impossible. True it would cost the lives of ir.nocer.t people, patriotic Warsaw citizens, who fought without knowing the gamę of which they wcrc the yiotims. In tho end between 100,000 and 200,000 did so die. Whereupon the people who had sacrificed them, conscripted even their ghosts to march in their propaganda train.

The Catholic Attack    --

Secondly, there was a whirlwind campaign in the Catholic Press and the Commons Lobby, headed by the Scots Catholic bishops.

The Sooialists¹ Move

Thirdly, there was the action of the Polish Socialist Party--which always acts in close collusion with the extreme R’’ight--to sabotage the Premier's mission, and, through the voice of its leader, lately appointed Vice-President, to corral the Brftish Labour Party into the same camp.

This latter endeavour was not altogether auccessful, for the Pre3iderit-Elect and SociałiBt Chief when he went to address the General Couneil of the T.U.C. and to put his Party's views on the situation before it, spoke with such vehemence against the policy of the Unitod Nations, and against the Soviet Union in particular, that he actually shockea listeners not apt to be shocked by anti-Soviet and anti-Communist diatribes.

Some of his hearors in faot came to the conclusion that this Polish Sooialist leader could not be movfed even by the argument that the linę of policy he advocated would mean war with Russia.

A Bimilarly absurd incident. occurrcd at about tho same time at a Congress hołd recently in London. To this the Poles sent a gentleman described as a "youth leader". Other delegates viewea with hope and enthusiasm the new pattern already forming itself in Eastern Europę of peaceful and strong People's Republics, in olose friendsnip and profitable economic relations with a powerful U.S.S.R. The Pole, as his oontribution, averrea that the only way to ensure tho futurę of Europę was to secure the total disarmament of the U.S.S.R. That, he opined, would do the trick.

Proposals

It is, then, in this deliboratcly created atmosphere that the various discussions have taken place araong the Polish emigre leaders in London on the subject of the Mikołajczyk mission to Moscow and what is to follow it.

This in fact provides a part of the answer to the ąuestion being asked this week: Just why has there been this sharp turn for the worse, after the Justifiably high hopes that were raised after Mikołajczyk's return from Moscow? Why did the Polish Premier allow that optimism to be attributed to him?

For very shortly after his oheery return, there he was, apparently agreeing to the proposals which the London emigre Government saw fit to draw up for the "solution" of the ąuestion. And he must have known that these proposals could not possibly lead to a solution but only to further delay--ar.d delay in an atmosphere which was being heated and tempested by the propaganda referred to above.

The Proposals

The proposals were based on four main propositions: (1) That Mikołajczyk must be the Prime Minister of any new Government formed in Warsaw after the liberation of that oity. (2) That the new Governroent must be formed under the illegal constitution of 1935 and not the legał constitution of 1921.

(3) That the Bor-Sosnkowski "Underground"--which, so far as its leadership