Pawns

The Big Man in the Kremlin smiled & smiled as the little men in Moscow's old Polish Embassy talked & talked. For two days the Poles from Lublin* called the 1935 constitution fascist, demanded that the London Poles repudiate it, accept the constitution of 1921. For two days the six Poles from London defended the 1935 constitution as the legal basis of their government. If they repudiated it, they would repudiate themselves.

On the second day talk stopped. Off to the plane for Cairo and London dashed Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk and his three colleagues. Off to the plane for Lublin dashed the chairman of the Polish Committee for Liberation, Edward Osubka-Morawski, and Boleslaw Berut, president of the National Council (the Moscow-sponsored Polish underground parliament), who in the course of the Moscow negotiations turned out to be the real power among the Lublin Poles.

Poles in London were officially cheerful, unofficially gloomy. They thought they understood the Soviet game: as fast as the London Poles yielded a point, the Russians, through the Lublin Poles, would raise another. But the talks would not break down despite Mikolajczyk's flight to Britain--at least not until after the Russians were well into Germany.

The Big Man in the Kremlin smiled & smiled.

Tragedy in Warsaw. Meanwhile in Warsaw another tragic act in the Polish drama was ending. The underground revolt against the Germans, led by "General Bor" (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS), was all but crushed. Through London, General Bor reported: for the past fortnight the Red Army had not pressed the assault on Warsaw. Implication: the Russians had deliberately allowed the Germans to liquidate Warsaw's pro-London patriots.

Screamed the Moscow radio: "A libel on the Soviet High Command. . . . The London Polish circles responsible for the Warsaw uprising made no attempt to coordinate the revolt with the Soviet High Command. The responsibility thus lies with the Polish emigre circles in London."

**Temporary seat of the Polish Comittee of Liberation.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.