Fifth Partition of Poland

Prime Minister Winston Churchill had a Christmas present for the Poles--partition. To a House of Commons still seething with the Greek crisis, he announced that, with Britain's consent, Russia would extend her western frontier to the Curzon line. Poland would be compensated by about half of East Prussia, including Danzig, so that she would have a Baltic coast of some 200 miles (see map). She would also receive unspecified parts of eastern Germany to which Poland had historical claims. Presumably this meant parts of Silesia.

(A representative of the, Lublin Committee, writing in Pravda, claimed frontiers up to the Oder River for the new Poland.) Churchill did not say who was to get the bigger part of East Prussia, including the port and fortress of Koenigsberg, to which the Russians have staked claims.

Prime Minister Churchill was grim as he exhumed the "grim, bare bones" of the Polish question. He reported: "On Feb. 22 I said that at Teheran I took occasion to raise personally with Marshal Stalin the question of the future of Poland. It was with great pleasure that I heard from Marshal Stalin that he, too, was resolved upon the creation and maintenance of a strong, integral, independent Poland as one of the leading powers in Europe. He several times repeated this declaration in public. I am convinced that that represents the settled policy of the Soviet Union."

While Churchill was speaking, the heads of the Lublin Government were conferring in Moscow. It was expected that by next week they would be recognized as Poland's provisional government. Though political purists might cavil at the word "independent," Marshal Stalin had spoken only the literal truth to Prime Minister Churchill at Teheran, since the Lublin Government was Russian-controlled.

The Shock of Reality. The U.S. was shocked. It should not have been. Power politics still dominated Europe, and the past masters of power politics were the masters of the Kremlin. Ever since Winston Churchill's last visit to Russia (TIME, Oct. 16 et seq.), there had been little doubt that, for a free hand in the Mediterranean, he had been forced to grant Russia a free hand in Poland and the upper Balkans.

To his critics, Winston Churchill might well have answered: what else could I do? Britain had come to terms with Russia on the fate of Germany and spheres of influence in Europe. The terms were hard. Poland was the sacrifice.

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