Death of the Walrus

Government press censors in Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy and throughout South America last week doffed their caps to their colleagues in Poland. Polish censors had done the sort of job that is every censor's greatest ambition. The high command of the Polish Army had known it for weeks, so had the Cabinet, the secret police. Government plans had been drawn up and every preparation made. Yet not until it was all over did the world know that Poland's most powerful son, the shaggy-browed old walrus, Marshal Josef Pilsudski had died of cancer of the stomach and liver. At 9 p. m. a State reception for the French Ambassador was suddenly canceled. Police patrols that already had their orders moved out to strategic street corners. Every theatre, cafe and dance hall in Warsaw was closed, indefinitely. Cabinet Ministers hustled to a meeting. Crowds began to gather before the gates of suburban Belvidere Palace-- the old Marshal's home. Then at 10 p. m. came the announcement to surprise the world. Poland's dictator was dead.

Various facts made the Polish censors' job an easier one. For years Wralrus Pilsudski had been a virtual recluse, disdaining interviews, refusing to receive distinguished guests. The Government made no effort to hide the fact that he was sick, but the 67-year-old dictator, despite his hoarse profanity, his swaggering and sabre rattling, had been in poor health for years. He was a martyr to severe attacks of asthma ever since his exile in Siberia 48 years ago. Thus several days ago when a famed cancer specialist arrived from Vienna, few Poles were smart enough to guess the reason, and three weeks ago when Poland adopted a new Constitution putting in legal form the system under which the country has run for years, and giving Puppet President Ignatz Moscicki the powers of a real dictator (TIME, May 6), all the world accepted the official explanation: Marshal Pilsudski's dictatorship was now nine years old. He wanted to see if the system was yet strong enough to stand on its own feet. If not he was ready to step in and take over the Presidency he had many times refused.

Benito Mussolini has been a Socialist, a soldier, a Fascist. Josef Pilsudski performed several flip-flops more. He was born a Polish aristocrat, at Zulow, Province of Vilna, but his family had already lost most of its wealth through participation in a brief revolt against Imperial Russia in 1864. When Josef was seven the family fortunes were wiped out in a disastrous fire. Through high school he was in constant hot water with his teachers by insisting on speaking Polish.

By 1887 Josef Pilsudski, Socialist, was an exile in Siberia, charged with complicity in a plot to assassinate Alexander III. One of the leaders of the plot was the elder brother of Nikolai Lenin, who was hanged. Exile Pilsudski was well treated by his Russian guards, even allowed to go hunting with a double-barreled shotgun.

Five years later he was back, organizing the Polish Socialist Party on Russian soil. A few years later found Conspirator Pilsudski doing in Poland exactly what Conspirator Stalin was doing in Russia proper: leading a gang of highway robbers and bank raiders whose object was to seize money for political propaganda. Even in those days Nikolai Lenin knew that Josef Pilsudski was no Socialist at heart. Said he:

"You are our companion in arms until the fall of Tsarism, but after that you will turn your back on us."

All his life walrus-mustached Josef Pilsudski was faithful to but one ideal, the strength and independence of Poland. With the collapse of Germany, Austria and Russia in 1917-18, he turned promptly to France for assistance against the Bolsheviks. In this he was helped mightily by lion-maned Pianist Paderewski who won the sympathy of Woodrow Wilson and other Allied leaders. In 1920 when Marshal Pilsudski was at war with Russia in an attempt to drive Soviet troops from East Galicia, and found his troops beaten at every turn, it was the French military mission, and in particular Marshal Foch's favorite, dapper little General Maxime Weygand, that turned the Bolsheviks from the gates of Warsaw in one of the decisive battles of modern times. Later in Warsaw he became intimate with two men destined to go far, Relief Administrator Herbert Hoover, and Mgr. Achille Ratti, who became Pope of Rome in 1922.

All his life Josef Pilsudski thought like a soldier. The constant bickering of Poland's Sejm (Parliament), which at one time contained at least 22 different parties, first amazed, then disgusted him. In May 1926 he headed a coup d'etat that raked the streets of Warsaw with gunfire for two days, kicked out the Government, and set up as President of Poland a kindly unworldly scientist who had been a good friend of the old Marshal's since their meeting in London in 1902: Ignatz Moscicki. Josef Pilsudski was content to become Premier, Minister of War and Inspector General of the Army. The last two posts he held until his death last week.

The Colonels. No sooner did news of the end flash to the world last week than headlines blossomed with potent questions. Who would succeed the old Marshal? He had been friendly to Germany, would Poland now swing back to France? Would Adolf Hitler seize on the next few months of indecision for a desperate try to regain the Polish Corridor? Would Pianist Ignace Paderewski come out of political oblivion? Would Foreign Minister Josef Beck be next Dictator of Poland? It was far too soon for any man to know the answer to any of these but one thing was certain. For the next few months at least Poland will be run by the same little group of old campaign cronies who used to meet night after night at the swank Cafe Europejska for champagne and unofficial Cabinet meetings, the "Pilsudski Colonels."

When the Army alone knew that the brave old walrus was dying three weeks ago, Poland's famed Colonels' Clique suddenly brought forward the new Constitution on which they had been working for five years and had it formally signed. Thus last week gentle President Moscicki, a brilliant scientist but an uncertain politician, found himself with enormous paper powers. He has absolute veto over Parliament, he can take command of the Army and Navy, and dismiss Parliament by decree.

Taking the place of the Senate is a new group known as the Assembly of Elders. One third are appointed by the President, two thirds are elected by a group known as the Elite: males who have won either of two high Polish military decorations. The Elders, in other words, are the Elite who are the old friends of the Cafe Europejska, the Colonels. The President in theory can dismiss them. The Colonels knew that never, never would President Moscicki dream of such a thing, and they alone have the power to force the election of his successor.

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