Warsaw to Angers

Out of Paris chuffed last week a special train crammed with statesmen and ambassadors. Speeding through the "Chateau Country" it rolled down the beauteous Valley of the Loire on an extra-special mission. Aboard were nearly all members of the new expatriate "Government of Poland" recently set up at Paris (TIME, Oct. 9).

Just out of hospital, after a severe attack of pleurisy, was President Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, who sat pale and hollow-eyed watching the telegraph poles flash past. A political neutral, onetime President of the Senate in Warsaw, the ailing President leaves nearly everything to his active Premier, suave, resourceful General Wladyslaw Sikorski who chatted busily in the train last week with members of his cabinet, many of whom a few short weeks ago were fleeing impoverished across Poland to escape as best they could.

"What a marvelous thing it is to be able to roll along in this train in perfect peace!" said one of the Premier's aides. "The last time I was on a train back in Poland enemy aircraft dived every 20 minutes and machine-gunned the train."

The Polish special finally stopped 188 miles from Paris in Angers, sedate and historic capital of the old duchy of Anjou. This province was the patrimony of Henry III of Valois who in 1573 was elected King of Poland. Appropriately Angers, with its "Chateau of the King of Poland" and along the Maine its "Wharves of the King of Poland," was chosen by the French Cabinet to serve as the expatriate "Capital of Poland."

As the train drew in a brass band blared French and Polish airs and the city was thick with crossed French, Polish and British flags. In every shop window were placards reading ALL HONOR TO HEROIC AND MARTYRED POLAND. Citizens of Angers cordially cried "Vive Sikorski" although remarking privately that perhaps the presence of their Polish guests may make Angers a target for German bombs.

"Like Frontier Guards." Berlin papers have for some time called the Polish Government "a farce." Last week the Moscow press picked up a New York Herald Tribune story saying that at Angers "one of the smallest States in the world--probably smaller than any except the State of Vatican City--is being established on an estate one mile long and half a mile wide in the Valley of the Loire." At this Pravda of Moscow jibed: "Two things particularly worry Sikorski: first the absence of a capital city; secondly, the absence of a national minority to oppress. Sikorski is hesitating whether to import the latter or ask local French authorities for the loan of a few peasants to ill treat."

After the "new State" had made worldwide headlines, tactful Angers authorities unobtrusively explained that it had no dimensions, that their soil remains 100% French but that troops of the Polish Army, which General Sikorski is industriously recruiting in France and Britain among expatriate Poles, will be permitted to mount armed guard over the buildings leased to the Poles in Angers, and "it is expected they will feel and act like frontier guards."

Excepting Germany and Russia, the Great Powers acted as if a State had been set up in Angers. They sent their diplomatic envoys, including U. S. Ambassador Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Jr., the Philadelphia socialite who was bombed out of Poland with such eclat. He promptly rented the Chateau de Plessis-Bourre, one of the handsomest in Angers. This 15th-Century pile is officially a historical monument in which there is no electric light, but Mr. and Mrs. Biddle seemed to enjoy groping among romantic shadows in a former residence of King Louis XI.

Newer and distinctly more practical for the impoverished Poles is the pleasant unhistoric chateau in which President Raczkiewicz will reside, surrounded by spreading vegetable gardens and big cow pastures. With any luck, the new Polish colony of 75 in Angers will be able to grow much of its own food. The gold reserve of the Bank of Poland was successfully smuggled out during the German invasion, gives the expatriate Government a fat nest egg of $80,000,000--but it is not supposed to be used for current expenses.

"Past Errors." Last fortnight Premier Sikorski was in London, where King George and Queen Elizabeth lunched them at Buckingham Palace and they had long conferences at No. 10 Downing Street with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. General Sikorski created a mild sensation by declaring that his Government does not differentiate between the German and Russian invasion of his country and added that he had no reason to believe that Britain and France take a contrary view. In tune with the new Anglo-French groping toward a European Union, he voiced "hope that the convulsions now shaking Europe will lead to the emergence of the idea of European solidarity."

The Premier also conferred with Dr. Eduard Benes, former President of Czechoslovakia from which Poland last year seized by force about 400 square miles, the Teschen area. Czechs bitterly declare that Poland did to them exactly what the Soviet Union later did to Poland: took advantage of a Nazi smash to grab. But today there is no point in Czecho-Slovaks quarreling with Poles, and General Sikorski observed after his conference with Dr. Benes: "Past errors between our two countries have been repaired and in the future we shall co-operate."

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