Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1933. AN UNORTHODOX DICTATOR

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 49, 26 August 1933, Page 12

Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1933. AN UNORTHODOX DICTATOR

Marshal Pilsudski, the dictator of Poland, is by no means the strongest but is perhaps the most interesting of all contemporary rulers. The adventures of his stormy career might well, as Mr. Vernon Bartlett says, "make the wildest cowboy from the Far West—even a cowboy on the films—decidedly jealous." He has passed, five of the best years of his life in Siberia. He has escaped from the worst prison in Warsaw by pretending to be mad. He has published a revolutionary paper in Eussia in such secrecy that Jiis wife liad to sing loudly so that other people would not hear the printing machine while the paper was going through the press. During the War he fought first with Hie Central Powers and then against them, until the Germans captured him and locked him up in a fortress. He has been a very successful bandit—not for his own personal profit, since even today ho is a. poor man, but so that the Russians might help the Poles to free themselves from Russian rule. The last of the incidents mentioned by Mr. Bartlett is not fairly treated by Count D'Etchegoyen in the witty and informing book on "The Comedy of Poland" which too often betrays an anti-Polish bias. He describes the sticking-up of a train between Vilna and Grodno in 1905 by armed men who robbed the Russian passengers—foreigners being exempted —of some 3,000,000 roubles. Duly recording the fact that no foreigner was robbed, but not that the bandits did not take the money for themselves but for the cause, the writer continues as follows:— The captain of this crew was none otlier than the future Premier of all the Polands. This clearly demonstrates that a man of linn character, who does not allow himself to be hampered by vain scruples, and does not fall into the hands of the police may, even in these days, aspire to the most brilliant career. The Count might have added that a Polish Robin Hood who merely robbed the Russians fora patriotic purpose was actually increasing his claim upon the confidence of his fellow-countrymen, but in this respect they probably have the sentiment of all other oppressed nationalities to keep them in countenance. The Frenchman's reference to keeping out of the hands of the police as a condition of Pilsudski's success is also unhappy. He was constantly falling into their hands, and the result was of course to strengthen his standing as a popular hero, especially if he made a brilliant escape. On one of these occasions the convoy of prisoners to which he belonged took six months to reach Irkutsk, and he had still 1000 kilometres to travel before reaching the prison on the Lena Avhere Jie was held five years. There Pilsudski appears to have served his full term, but as described by Lord D'Abernon, he has another escape from the Warsaw Gaol to his credit as brilliant as that to which Mr. Bartlett refers. An order reached the governor of ihe gaol from the Chief of the Police to hand over ten of his most important Polish prisoners to a police escort. A certain Captain yon Budberg led the escort. He was a type of swaggering high-handed officer from the Baltic provinces. The prison governor did not dare refuse his demand. The prisoners were led out and packed into a special prison van. The next day the Warsaw. public learned that the driver had 'been chloroformed soon after the van left '< the prison; Captain yon Budberg was an emissary of Pilsudski; the order of release was a forger}*. In the World War Pilsudski attained the astonishing distinction of being decorated by both sides, yet without either treachery or inconsistency. Early in the War he received the Kaiser's Iron Cross for the promptitude with which he raised, a brigade of Polish volunteers,, enlisted with them under the German^ Austrian flags and led them int/Jj Russia. A few years later the French Government bestowed upon him 'the medal of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour for his services on the other side. But the apparent inconsistency was that of the whole Polish nation, to whose destiny Pilsudski was true throughout. The first impulse of every Pole was naluraUy to fight against the Power foom whose tyranny lie had suffered, and the result was that apart firom their obligations under conscription they were at first fighting on opposite sides. When Russia, who was Pilsudski's particular tyrant, htad withdrawn, it was possible for their volunteers to unite against Germany and Austria. In war as in pewce his fidelity to what he regarded as the interests of Poland has newer been questioned, and in both cases his methods, though unorthodox, have been highly successful. He has even suffered from a kind of physical unorthodoxy which appears to have had its compensation's if not its advantages. He loves danger, says Lord D'Aberr.on, his pulse only beating at a normal rate When he is in imminent personal peril—at otlier times only forty to ihe minute. In the. opinion of Marshal Pilsudski's countrymen, and apparently in his own also, the greatest

of his military successes was rendered since the War and entitles him to a share of the world's gratitude comparable to what it has extended to Foch. Mr. Churchill, in the fifth volume of his "World Crisis," has painted a desperate picture of the utter prostration—political, military, material, and moral —of both Britain and France in 1920 when the Soviet armies had invaded Poland, captured Vilna, and on July 23 compelled the Poles to sue for an armistice. Fiance "saw in jeopardy the whole results of the Great War in Eastern Europe," but, like Britain, was reduced to "words and gestures." The terms offered to Poland on August 17 suggested that she would become "a Communist annex of the Soviet Power." But meanwhile "a transformation sudden, mysterious, and decisive" had supervened. It produced the same sort of impression upon the mind as had the Battle of the Marne, almost exactly six years before. Once again armies* were advancing, exulting, seemingly irresistible, carrying with them measureless possibilities of woo and ruin. Once again for no assignable cause they halt, they falter, become disconnected, become disordered, and begin to retreat under a compulsion seemingly as inexorable as that which had carried them forward. Warsaw, like Paris, is saved. ... On August 13 the battle for Warsaw had begun at Eadzimin, loss than fifteen miles from the -city: and four days later the Bolshevik armies were in full flight, leaving 70,000 surviving prisoners in Polish hands. The Miracle of the Vistula had repeated in a different form the Miracle of the Marne. To what human agency was the credit due for the result of what Lord D'Abernon calls one of the decisive battles of the world? The Poles favoured the claims of their soldiers and their great Marshal-President. British observers gave ihe credit to the inspiration, organisation, and strategy of Gerieral Weyzand, who had been sent from Paris to advise. Mr. Churchill leaves it to his readers to choose either explanation or to combine the two.: It speaks well for the stability of Poland that we have heard less of her politics, either domestic or foreign, during the six months of the Nazi mania than during the six previous months, and that the mild explosion which was reported yesterday is better calculated to amuse than to alarm her neighbours. While the dictator was asleep burglars forced the windows of his private chancellery at Zanek Palace, opened a safe, and stole £2000 and "secret documents worth many thousands of pounds to the enemies of Poland." Hundreds' of suspects have been arrested, five hundred houses searched, the frontiers are being watched, and the whole Police Force is threatened with dismissal if the documents are not recovered. Which shows that Marshal Pilsudski, who has never been credited with a good temper, and lately appears to have been feeling the burden of his years, can still be very energetic and very nasty when he is roused, and that somebody is likely to get into trouble.