Report from Warsaw

Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune looked at Warsaw last week through U.S. eyes. He attended Polish National Council meetings, reported them a "sorry travesty on parliamentary democracy," with a show-of-hands voting procedure so informal that he could have voted on half a dozen bills without detection. Wrote Bigart:

"Perhaps it is unfair to judge this 'government of national unity' by Western standards. Since Poland lives under a continued threat of underground terror from the Right, it was inevitable that the government should impose a legalized terror from the Left. . . .

"The state of unrest gives the government an excuse for violating . . . freedom of the press. . . . Vice Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk's Gazeta Ludowa was permitted to print only watered-down versions of the Peasant Party attack on Communist control. . . . Such restraints do not apply to the Communist organ Glos Ludu, which can fill its columns with reckless charges against Mikolajczyk. This journal's recent reference to Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, Republican of Michigan, as 'a sworn and deserving follower and defender of Hitler' will give some measure of its madness. . . .

"[Poland] is not quite a dictatorship, although the Council scene bore an ominous resemblance to totalitarian parliaments. Mikolajczyk, who would win an overwhelming victory in any free election held in Poland today, and who claims to have the backing of at least 75% of the Polish people in his demand for an early free election, was completely and impotently alone with his handful of delegates.

"Communists, Socialists and the government-sponsored 'Peasant Party' joined in a vote of confidence for the coalition government which included censure of Mikolajczyk's Polish Peasant Party for 'obstructing national unity.' . . . Premier Edward Osubka-Morawski joined the attack. 'We must eliminate elements,' he cried, 'which are trying to conceal illegal reactionary underground activity by taking part in the government of the country.'

"[Mikolajczyk's] demands for an election on July 28 were ignored. The government, which has no appetite for a balloting unless the election is rigged in its favor by means of a single ticket in which the Polish Peasant Party would have less than 20% of the candidates, speaks vaguely of holding an election in the fall. . . .

"Political feelings have reached such a pitch of bitterness that the resignation of Mikolajczyk now might easily plunge Poland into a civil war far bloodier than the current fighting with underground Fascists. Knowing this, Mikolajczyk is determined to stay."

Only encouraging note in Bigart's report was the fact that it was sent, uncensored, from behind the Iron Curtain.

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