ACTION BY SOVIET

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 April 1943, Page 3

ACTION BY SOVIET

RELATIONS WITH POLAND SEVERED IN PROTEST AGAINST REQUEST TO RED CROSS. TO INVESTIGATE NAZI MURDER ALLEGATIONS. LONDON, April 26. It was announced in Moscow this evening that the Soviet Government has broken off diplomatic relations with the Polish Government. M. Molotov' (Russian Foreign Minister) told the Polish Ambassador of' this position yesterday and handed him a Note explaining the reason for the action taken by the Soviet.

The Note observed that the Polish Government had asked the International Red Cross Society to investigate German charges that x the Russians had murdered Polish officers and men and stated that this step was taken without asking the Soviet Government for any explanation. The action of the Polish Government was described as entirely abnormal, violating all standards of relationship between two Allied nations.

SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS AGAINST PRESENT POLISH GOVERNMENT. MADE IN RUSSIAN NOTE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.5 a.m.) RUGBY, April 26. While the breaking of relations between the Russian and Polish governments is greatly regretted in London, it is not felt that such a setback in relations which have never been easy should be given exaggerated importance. The British Government rendered valuable assistance in the past, especially when Soviet-Polish relations were resumed in 1941, and there is no doubt that every assistance will be given again—it can be hoped with the same successful results.

Yesterday M. Molotov handed to the Polish Ambassador a Note which read, according to a Moscow message: “On behalf of the Government of the U.S.S.R., I have the honour to notify the Polish Government of the following: The Soviet. Government considers the recent behaviour of the Polish Government with regard to the U.S.S.R. as entirely abnormal, violating all. re- ( gulations and standards of relations between two Allied States. A slanderous campaign hostile to the Soviet Union, launched by the German Fascists in connection with the murder of Polish officers which they themselves committed in the Smolensk area, on territory occupied by German troops, was at once taken up by the Polish Government and is being fanned in every way by the Polish Official Press. Far from offering a rebuff to the vile Fascists’ slander of the U.S.S.R., the Polish Government did not even find it necessary to address the Soviet Government with any inquiry or explanation on this subject. Having committed the monstrous crime against Polish ofcers, the Hitlerite authorities now stage a farcical investigation, and for this staging they have made use of certain Polish pro-Fascist elements whom they themselves picked up in occupied Poland, where everything is under Hitler’s heel,’ and where no honest Pole can openly have his say. For the ‘investigation’ both the Polish Government and the Hitlerite Government invited the International Red Cross, which is compelled in the conditions of a terroristic regime, with its gallows and mass extermination of a peaceful population, to take part in this investigation farce, staged by Hitler. Clearly such an investigation,’ conducted behind the back of the Soviet Government at that, cannot evoke the confidence of people possessing any amount of honesty. The fact that a hostile campaign against the Soviet Union commenced simultaneously in Germany and in the Polish Press, and was conducted along the same lines, leaves no doubt as to the existence of contact and accord in the carrying out of a hostile campaign between .the enemy of the Allies Hitler and the Polish Government. While the peoples of the Soviet Union, bleeding profusely in a hard struggle against Hitlerite Germany, strain every effort for the defeat of the common enemy of the Russian and Polish peoples, and all feedom-loving democratic countries, the Polish Government, to please Hitler’s tyranny, dealt a treacherous blow to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Government is aware that this hostile campaign against the Soviet Union is undertaken by the Polish Government in order to exert pressure upon the Soviet Government by making use of a slanderous Hitlerite fake for the purpose of wresting from it territorial concessions, at the expense of rhe interests of the Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Byelorussia and Soviet Lithuania. All these circumstances compel thhe Soviet Government to recognise that the present Government of Poland, having slid to the path of accord with Hitler’s Government, has actually discontinued Allied relations with the U.S.S.R. and adopted a hostile attitude towards the Soviet Union. On the strength of all the above, the Soviet Government has decided to sever relations with the Polish Government. -—(Signed) Molotov.” The London view is that any impartial investigation of the Smolensk affair would have been impossible with the Germans in control of the territory in question. No doubt the Germans will try to make great capital out of what they will regard as the success of their latest propaganda barrage, the aim of which is to foment discord among the United Nations, but one thing at least emerges with the utmost clarity from London reactions to the present Soviet-Polish diplomatic difficulties —the essential unity of the United Nations is and will be unimpaired. A United States State Department spokesman said today, according to a Washington message, that the State Department had learned that the Soviet Union had severed diplomatic relations with Poland “with regret.”