THREE TRAGIC YEARS

Evening Star, Issue 24288, 1 September 1942, Page 2

THREE TRAGIC YEARS

POLAND BEARS HER GROSS NO COMPROMISE WITH HUN (P.A.) WELLINGTON, August 31. “At no time in her long history of 1,000 years has Poland suffered such a roll of death, suffering, and destruction as during the last three years,” said the Consul-General for Poland, Count Wodzicki, in a statement issued on the occasion of the eve of Poland’s fourth year of war. “ But never has she proved herself so strong morally and physically, or so united behind her soldiem and her leader, General Sikorski. The Polish campaign in 1930 was fought without any help whatever-—it turned Warsaw into ruins and Poland into a graveyard. It enabled Britain, however, to take advantage of a seven mouths’ respite. “ Confronted with disaster unprecedented, with her church, educational, and social welfare structures in ruins, with hundreds of thousands of her subjects driven from their farms and workshops, with still as many facing firing squads and concentration camps, and with 1,500,000 workers sent to Germany, Poland to-day stands as united as ou the eve of this' struggle. No party, no single man, gave thought to a possible political compromise with .the Hun. “ For obvious reasons one cannot give any substantial details of the wellorganised active resistance of the Poles at home. It can be disclosed, however, that 150 different secret papers, most of them of pocket size, are published, some with an issue of 12,000 copies, notwithstanding the fact that editors, printers, and readers face the death penalty. In Warsaw, in July, 1941, one editor and 82 other people were beheaded. “In spite of having paid heavily already with the lives of her soldiers in the campaigns at Narvik, the Maglnot Line, and. Tobruk, it is interesting to note, as by General Sikorski, that Poland’s army, at present on three continents, ranks fifth in strength among those of, the Allied Nations. It forms also the hulk of General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson’s Tenth Army in the Middle East. A large unit is undergoing training in South Africa, and numbers of Polish officers are also instructing native troops in West Africa. In spite of heavy convoy work and many naval engagements, the Polish navy and mercantile marine are maintained at their original strength by reason of United States Lend-Lease. “ The Polish Eagles of the air force have considerably increased since the Battle of Britain, 1940, when they numbered 10,000. They formed more than 10 per cent, of the recent mass night bombing raiders over Germany. “ The Polisli-Czechoslovak agreement of November, 1940, and the PolishRussian agreement of July, 1941, which was confirmed after General Sikorski’s visit to Moscow in December, 1941, will no doubt be of paramount importance in the post-war policy of the United Nations. The establishment of a Polish medical school and faculty of law at Edinburgh, and, recently, the Polish Institute of Science and Learning at New York, will form the foundations of the intellectual life of the Poland of to-morrow.

“ The Polish people,” Count WocTzicki concluded, “on the eve of the fourth year of the war, are standing unflinchingly at the side of their allies, fully confident of eventual victory, which, will ensure just retribution upon the Germans and rehabilitation, for them.” ' >