The Price

Prime Minister Winston Churchill flew back to London from Moscow last week with a promise of the world's peace in his pocket. Two days later, in an unusually brief speech, with little Churchillian rhetoric and few high spots, he reported to an attentive Parliament the results of his conference with Joseph Stalin. Peace, like most things, had a certain price.

Said Prime Minister Churchill: "I am very glad to inform the House that our relations with Soviet Russia were never more close, intimate and cordial. . . ."

Britons, who regard Russians as rather peculiar foreigners but not sinister bogeymen, and mean every word of the 20-year Anglo-Soviet treaty, were glad to hear it, but not surprised. What they wanted to hear from Mr. Churchill was whether he had succeeded in solving the Polish problem, and on what terms. Also, what about the Balkans?

Working Agreement. Reporter Churchill took up the Balkans first. Said he: Britain and Russia have a "very good working agreement about all these countries, singly and in combination." But the nature of this agreement was specified only in the case of Yugoslavia. "We are in fact acting jointly--Russia and Britain --in our relations with both the Royal Yugoslav Government, headed by Dr. Subasich, and with Marshal Tito, and we have invited them by joint message to ... a conference between them both at Napies." This statement could not be considered apart from the joint Churchill-Stalin statement issued from Moscow: "The right of the Yugoslav people to settle their future constitution for themselves after the war is, of course, recognized as inalienable." In this inalienable right Marshal Tito would certainly take a decisive hand, and Tito is more responsive to Moscow than to Britain. But Russia could hardly ask for more than that King Peter's Government should throw a royal nimbus over the Communist Marshal.

Urgent Adjuration. When he came to the subject of Poland, it was evident that Winston Churchill had, in effect, underwritten Russia's Polish solution. He urgently adjured Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk to return to Poland to head the Polish Government, gave the London Poles a sharp reprimand for not having come to terms with Russia sooner. Said Churchill: "I hope Mr. Mikolajczyk will soon return to Moscow, and it will be a great disappointment to all sincere friends of Poland if a good arrangement cannot be made which will enable them to form a Polish Government on Polish soil, a Government recognized by all the great powers concerned. ... If the Polish Government had taken the advice we tendered them at the beginning of this year, the additional complication produced by the formation of the Polish National Committee of Liberation at Lublin would never have arisen.''

Well did Winston Churchill know that Premier Mikolajczyk's return to Poland implied a split in the Polish Government in Exile. General Kasimierz Sosnkowski and other London Poles who refused to accept a Russian-dominated Poland were reported to have bought properties in Brazil, where they planned to go into permanent exile. General Bor (indicted by Lublin as a traitor) and his Partisans --the only other organized anti-Russian group--were in even more permanent exile in German prison camps.

Stalin could scarcely ask for more than that Churchill should urge Mikolajczyk's return. For in the Russian solution of the Polish question, Premier Mikolajczyk was the Kremlin's indispensable man. The heavily Communist Lublin Government was not the kind of popular-front goverment that Marshal Stalin intends to set up in Europe's Russia-neighboring countries.* Moreover, the Lublin Government was composed of political nonentities, scarcely known even in Poland, with no standing at all in the world. And they had been weakened by the recent resignation, as a result of the failure of Lublin's drastic land reforms (TIME, Sept. 25), of Agricultural Commissar Andrzej Witos.

Plainly the next move was up to the Polish Premier. And out of loyalty to Poland and loyalty to peace there seemed to be only one way in which he could move--toward Russia.

* Last week the Soviet Government refused to let UNRRA enter liberated Poland for relief work.

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