Poles Apart

Victory in Tunisia warmed up U.S., British and Russian relations last week.

Joseph Stalin sent congratulatory messages to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, Soviet newspapers released "the greatest flood of praise for foreign powers in the history of the Soviet Union." Detailed radio broadcasts created a sensation among the Russian people. Writer-Spokesman Ilya Ehrenburg exulted: "We know our strength. We know the Allies' strength. We know how strong is our military friendship in arms. Africa is over. Europe is ahead."

But "military friendship" alone will not be enough for a lasting, workable relation between Russia, the U.S. and Britain. In the way of political friendship and understanding still lay the festering dispute between Russia and another ally of the U.S. and Britain--the Polish Government in Exile.

Phrase-Making. Last week Joseph Stalin sent a letter, signed with green crayon on chalk-white paper, to New York Timesman Ralph Parker. The letter was warm in tone. It bubbled with phrases of good will. It said that Russia favors "a strong and independent" postwar Poland. Relations after the war, he said, must be based on "the fundament of solid good-neighborly relations and mutual respect, or, should the Polish people so desire, upon the fundament of an alliance providing for mutual assistance against the Germans as the chief enemies of the Soviet Union and Poland."

The message did little more than reiterate a previously defined position: friendship toward the Polish people but no backing down on Russia's claims to Poland's prewar eastern provinces. Polish Premier Wladyslaw Sikorski accepted Stalin's message with pronounced reserve. Having previously noted that "there are commitments beyond which no Pole can go," he now brought up the question of "the masses of the Polish population" still inside Russia.

The next Soviet expression did not improve matters. Coldly effective, greatly feared Andrei Vishinsky, chief prosecutor of the Moscow treason trials of 1936-38, now a Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs, spoke up to the foreign press. Carefully and thoroughly, Vishinsky named names, dates and places in building up the Russian case against the Polish Government. His report constituted a bristling, bitter and memorable indictment of widespread Polish espionage inside Russia and the refusal of the Polish Army (now withdrawn to Iran) to fight alongside Russian troops.

Polish Foreign Minister Count Edward Raczynski termed the accusations "fantastic," "inconceivable." Said he, echoing the sentiments of annoyed U.S. and British diplomats: such statements "will not produce the much desired harmony either in Polish-Soviet relations or among the United Nations in general." The Soviet Government denied that it would sponsor a Polish exile government in Russia but invited Poles in Russia to an All-Slav congress in Moscow, announced the formation of a Free Polish legion to fight alongside the Russians.

In net effect, the U.S.S.R. had gone to great pains to justify its position; it had even shown some signs of anxiety to please the U.S. and Britain. But the Soviet Government had not changed its basic position one whit.

Plain Talk. From a wise Briton came this advice: "As we and the Americans are not willing to fight Russia on the question of her western frontiers we should not encourage other nations there to be intransigent either by action or by our passivity. But we should also make it clear to the Russians that an honest understanding with us and the Americans is also to their own interest. And we should also tell them that Liberalism is the result of our revolution just as Bolshevism is the result of theirs. The problem really is not that of Russian frontiers but turns on confidence between Russia and the West. If that confidence is not established all questions in Eastern Europe will tend to be solved by physical strength, pure and simple."

It was no secret in the U.S. State Department that there was still a complete lack of frankness between Russia and the U.S. Perhaps that was why President Roosevelt dispatched Joe Davies to Moscow.

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