Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 1943. AN UNFORTUNATE RUPTURE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 April 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 1943. AN UNFORTUNATE RUPTURE.

TN some quarters in London a cheerful view is taken of the possibility of promoting an early settlement of the dispute between Russia and Poland—a dispute which has led meantime to the Soviet Union breaking off diplomatic relations with the Polish Government—but the gravity of the position is recognised and emphasised by a number of the leading British newspapers.

The action of the Soviet Government is based primarily upon its view that the Polish Government has been guilty of an act of treachery in taking up and asking lor an investigation by th? Internatonal Red Cross of a German allegation that a number of Polish officers were murdered by the Russians m the Smolensk area —a monstrous crime, the Soviet Government affirms, which was in fact committed by the Germans themselves. Whatever may be thought of the charges made against the Polish Government in the Soviet Note, it is rather obvious, as has been stated in London, that “any impartial investigation of the Smolensk affair would have been impossible with the Germans in occupation of the territory in question.” That much more than a determination of responsibility foi the Smolensk atrocity is at stake is made plain, however, in the following passage in the Soviet Note': — 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 1 purpose of wresting from it a territorial concession at the expense of the interests of the Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Byelo-Russia, and Soviet Lithuania. This means plainly that the Soviet Union is claiming the right to recover and retain part at least of what constituted Eastern Poland until 1939. After the collapse of Polish armed resistance in that year, the Soviet Union occupied extensive areas ot Eastern Poland inhabited largely by Ukrainian and White Russian populations. /

In July, 1941, Russia entered into an agreement with the Polish Government in exile under which it abandoned the line reached in its occupation and agreed to submit the determination of the frontier to negotiation. It has been stated, however, that “this abandonment, of the specific 1939 line never was regarded as an abandonment of the Russian contention that parts of former Poland inhabited by Ukrainian and White Russian populations belonged inherently to Russia. Polish territorial claims, on the other hand, are based upon a longer historical view, taking account of the national boundaries of the country before it was partitioned by Russia and other adjacent nations.

It seems altogether probable that so far as the Smolensk affair is concerned, the charge against Russia, is simply and solely an invented German slander, designed toi sow dissension between Allied nations. In regard to the Soviet-Polish fiontier, on the other hand, there is an acute difference which will not easily be brought to a settlement. An equitable settlement of this difficult question and others must be achieved, however, if the United Nations are to maintain the unity which is an all-important condition of victory over Axis gangsterdom and of the establishment of lasting peace and security.