Funeral March?

A big black hearse had already driven up quietly and was standing with its engines idling. It was waiting to carry the Polish Government in Exile into the Potter's Field of history. For in Yalta the Big Three had written a successful finis to the first stage of the social revolution epitomized in Poland's Warsaw Government. By agreeing that the Warsaw Government should be "reorganized on a broader . . . basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad," by agreeing to a free Polish election supervised by Russia's Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov and the U.S. and British ambassadors to Moscow, the U.S. and Britain had in effect recognized the Warsaw Government and withdrawn recognition from the Polish Government which was closest to the one Britain had gone to war for in 1939.

But the victims even of historical murder scream. The London Poles reacted violently. Said an official communique: "Violation . . . of the Atlantic Charter and the right of every nation to defend its own interests. . . . The fifth partition of Poland now accomplished by her Allies." Cried septuagenarian Premier Tomasz Arciszewski: "The Polish nation does not believe in the promises of Russia to guarantee a free, democratic Poland."

But the veteran Socialist Premier was not one of those Poles abroad (160,000 soldiers and 200,000 civilians, not counting those in Russia) who would be welcomed back to Warsaw. The Red Army's Red Star had said bluntly: "The road to Poland is barred for those who now spread . . . libelous rumors of the 'partition' of Poland by Allied powers."*

Red Star had also said kind words--the first in many months--for Peasant Party leader and ex-Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk: "Among Polish emigre groups, Mikolajczyk and his supporters have refused to recognize the decisions of the London emigre Government. It is possible that among this group and even among others there will be many people ready to take upon themselves the responsibility for the future fate of Poland and participate in a reorganized Polish Government." Two days later, Moscow's Pravda attacked Mikolajczyk for criticizing the Yalta agreement on Poland and thereby aligning himself with "Polish reactionaries who have placed themselves outside the ranks of the United Nations."

But in London it was announced that the current issue of Mikolajczyk's Peasant Party organ Jutro Polski, would be the last. This seemed a hint that he might return to Poland to participate in the Warsaw Government. At week's end the press announced that Mikolajczyk and Karol Popiel, Christian Democratic leader, were waiting for Prime Minister Churchill's return from Yalta to go to Moscow and arrange to join the Warsaw Government.

The London Poles would bear Mikolajczyk no ill will if he did. In the U.S. their supporters described his state of mind at the time he last visited Moscow. His wife had been put in a German concentration camp. His only son was grown up. He had few illusions about accomplishing anything substantial for the Polish people by joining the Warsaw Government. He might, in the end, be killed by the Russians or the Poles. But if, before that time, he could do even a little for the Polish people, he felt that he should risk a return, even if it was a funeral march.

* The Lublin Government has warned all Polish exiles to forsake the London Government, on pain of imprisonment and loss of political rights.

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