POLAND FIGHTS ON

Southland Times, Issue 24837, 1 September 1942, Page 4

POLAND FIGHTS ON

Three Years of Death And Suffering (P.A.) WELLINGTON, August 31. “At no time in her long history of one thousand years has Poland suffered such a roll of death, suffering and destruction as during the last three years,” said the ConsulGeneral for Poland, Count Wodzicki, on the occasion of the eve of Poland’s fourth year of war. “But never has she proved herself so strong morally and physically, so united behind her soldiers and her leader, General Sikorski. “The Polish campaign in 1939 was fought without any help whatever—it turned Warsaw into ruins and Poland into a graveyard; it enabled Britain, though, to take advantage of seven months’ respite. Confronted with disaster unprecedented, with her church, education and social welfare 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 1,500,000 workers sent to Germany, Poland today stands as united as on the eve of this struggle. No party, no single man, gave a thought to a possible political compromise with the Hun. “For obvious reasons one cannot give any substantial details of the wellorganized active resistance of the Poles at home. It can be disclosed, however, that 150 different secret papers, mostly 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 persons were beheaded. POLES IN 10TH ARMY “Despite having paid heavily already with their lives, her soldiers were subsequently in the campaigns at Narvik, the Maginot line and Tobruk. It is interesting to note, as revealed by General Sikorski, that Poland’s Army, at present on three continents, ranks fifth in the strength of the Allied nations, forming also the bulk of General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson’s 10th 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. Despite heavy convoy work and -many naval engagements, the Polish Navy and mercantile marine are maintained' at their original strength by reason of the United States’ lend-lease scheme. “Polish eagles of the Air Force have considerably increased since the Battle of Britain in 1940, when they numbered 10,000. They formed more than 10 per cent, of the recent mass night bombing raiders over Germany. The PolishCzechoslovakain agreement of November 1940 and the Polish-Russian agreement of July 1941, 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 of Edinburgh and recently a Polish Institute of Science and Learning at New York is the foundation of the intellectual life of the Poland of tomorrow. The Polish people,” concluded Count Wodzicki, “on the eve of the fourth year of war are standing unflinchingly at the side of their Allies, fully confident of the eventual victory which will ensure, just retribution upon the Germans, and rehabilitation for them.”