Despite Terrible Suffering Poland Stands Unflinching

Taranaki Daily News, 1 September 1942, Page 4

Despite Terrible Suffering Poland Stands

Unflinching

Press Assn.

Wellington, Last Night.

• "At no time in her long history of one thousand years has Poland suffered such a toll of death, suffering and destruction as during the last three years," said the ConsulGeneral of Poland, Count Wodzicki, to-day 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 of 1939 was fought without any help whatever— it t.urned Warsaw into ruins and Poland into a graveyard, but it enabled Britain to take advanage 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 ftring squads and concentration camps, and with 1,500,000 workers sent to Germany, Poland to-day stands as united as on the eve of this struggle. No party, no single man gave a thought to possible political compromise with the Hun. Resistance at Home, "For obvious reasons one cannot give any substantial details of the well organised, active resistance of Poles at home. It can be disclosed, however, that 150 different secret papers, mostly 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. "Though she has paid heavily already with the lives of her soldiers and subseauently in the camoaigns of 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 Ktrenpth among the Allied nations. forming also the bulk of General Wilson's

A Polish pilot whose left arm was severed by a cannon shell from a German Messersclimitt was one of 64 men of a Polish wing of the Royal Air Force to receive decorations from General Sikorski, Prime Minister of Poland at an acrodrome "somewhere in England." 10th Army in the Middle East. A large unit is undergoir-q 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 is maintained at its original strength by reason ■ of United States lend-lease operations. Tlie Polish eagles of the air force have considerably increased since the Battle of Britain in 1940, when they numbered 10,000, and

formed more than 10 per cent. of the recent mass night bombing raiders over Germany . "The Polish-Czechoslovakian agreement of November. 1940, and the PolishRussian agreement of July, 1941, confirmed after General Sikorski's visit to Moscow in December, 1941, will no doubt be of paramount importance in the postwar policy of the United Nations. The establishment of a Polish medical school and faculty of law at Edinburgh and recently of a Polish Institute of Science and Learning at New York are the foundations of the intellectual life of the Poland of to-morrow. "The Polish people," conclnded Count Wodzicki, "on the eve of the fourth year of war are standing unfiinchingly at the side of their allies. "ullv confidcnt of an eventual victon- which will ensure just retribution upon th" Germans and rehabilitation far them."