ALLOWED TO LAPSE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 May 1943, Page 3

ALLOWED TO LAPSE

REQUEST BY THE POLISH GOVERNMENT FOR INVESTIGATION OF GRAVES NEAR SMOLENSK. ALLIES HOPING TG HEAL BREACH (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON. April 30. The Polish Government tonight issued a statement in London about their appeal to the International Red Cross Committee to investigate the graves of Polish officers discovered near Smolensk. The statement says that this discovery was exploited by German propaganda, and adds: “The International Red Cross Committee has explained the difficulty of complying with the Polish request. In the circumstances, the Polish Government regard the appeal as having lapsed. The rupture between Russia and Poland was possible only with the connivance of the Churchill Government, because the Polish representatives were obviously subservient to the British Foreign Office, said the chairman of the Independent Labour Party, in a speech. He said the rupture endorsed the correctness of the Independent Labour Party’s assumption of an inevitable clash between British and American imperialisms and the Soviet. If the situation became worse they must drive Labour from the National Government. The Russian spokesman in London declared: “The Poles will have to go a long way yet before there is any hope of healing the breach between Russia and the Polish Government.” The diplomatic correspondent of “The Times” says that the main Allied Powers are exchanging further views in Moscow in the hope of repairing the breach, which is wider than a simple severance of relations between a mighty Allied Power and a Government in exile. “The breach- has caused uneasiness among thousands of Polish fighting men in many battle areas, and has mystified Allied peoples throughout the world,” he says. “The discussions at present are tentative and delicate, but it can be said outright that the Germans are wrong when they confidently declare that the Russian Government intends to establish a rival left-wing i Polish Government in Moscow. Ac- ; cording to direct authority in Moscow, ; there is no such intention. “Nobody who has been in close con- ' tact with General Sikorski and his ; work during the past two years can . allow the charges that he is anti-de- ; mocratic and anti-Soviet to pass with- ■ out comment. Review of his policy ' which resulted in the two main agreei ments with the Soviet Union in 1941 shows that he is neither anti-demo-cratic nor anti-Soviet. “Neither can it be said that Poles in Poland regard General Sikorski disrespectfully. His voice amid all the horrors of enemy occupation has been heard in Poland and has been answered. Many Polish statements, on the other hand, mostly entirely unofficial, have been short-sighted and provocative when referring to a Power which has been Poland’s neighbour in peace ' and war.”