POLAND: HERE IS THE RECORD

By Ann Su Caldwell

Distributed by the Polonia Media Network

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, beginning World War II. This writing was published in 1945 by the Michigan Committee of Americans for Poland in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It not only presented an accurate picture of pre-war and wartime history, but an insightful prediction of the future. It was reintroduced in 1999 by Polonia Today as Polonians around the world commemorated the 60th anniversary of the invasion.

Part 7

POLAND OF THE FUTURE

It requires no special study to realize that if there is to be a free and secure Poland it must also be a strong Poland. Otherwise it is a source of constant temptation to powerful neighbors. As the largest of the eastern European countries it is the nucleus around which an advantageous federation could be built; for the fate of all its smaller neighbors, as this war has demonstrated, is closely linked with Poland, "the keystone of the arch."

For Russia, Poland is the gateway to Europe. Through it Russia can enter the western cultural and economic world on the roads of peace and greatly enrich itself; or if Poland is weak, Russia can take the path of disguised conquest.

Which of these roads Russia chooses is of vital importance to us, since say what we will, European war means world war.

A "strong Poland" is a Poland able to play the role geography has thrust upon it; a "free Poland" is one that governs itself without outside interference and is nobody's sphere of influence or protectorate. The Poles are not a homeless people for whom a country must be found. They have occupied the lands within the 1919-1939 frontiers for over a thousand years. The very fact that "compensation for loss of their eastern territories" is spoken of as a necessity acknowledges Polish rights to those territories which, in so far as they had not always been Polish, were not won by conquest or robbery but by cultural penetration, or added through mutual consent.

PROBLEM NOT PRIMARILY A BOUNDARY ISSUE

However, the present question is not primarily one of boundaries. Why should the territory of an ally, first to defend its rights, come into question at all? The British were not thinking of giving away Polish lands when they signed the agreement to aid in their defense, of giving lands to a government that had signed a pact with Hitler and later shared with him in partitioning Poland.

During the eighteen years between the signing of the Riga Treaty (1921), fixing the Polish-Soviet boundary, and the Soviet 1939 invasion, the Soviet Union had never complained of boundary injustice. On the contrary, in the "Great Soviet Encyclopaedia" and the "History of the All-Union Communist Party," they wrote of the victory of the Red Army in the Polish-Bolshevik War and of the Poles being forced to accept conditions favorable to the Soviets because of the exhaustion of Polish troops. And in connection with the Russo-Polish non-aggression pact initiated by Moscow eleven years ago after the Riga Treaty, no slightest reference was made to any Soviet claims on Poland's territory.

As for the White Ruthenian and Ukrainian minorities, no better evidence is needed to show their unwillingness to become part of the USSR than the way they have opposed Soviet authorities during both the first (1939) and second (1944) Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland. Latest word from the southeast area reports thousands of anti-Soviet Ukrainians fleeing their home to live in the forests.

YALTA DECISIONS THREAT TO POLAND'S INDEPENDENCE

But the real threat to Poland in the Yalta decisions concerns its independence. The Lublin group is to be the dominating element in the promised provisional government. That element, now in control of Poland for over nine months, has shown the course it will follow, which is nothing less than sovietization. Despite strict Soviet secret police control, abundant confirmed information reaches the outside. It is the purpose of the puppet Poles, merely a screen for the real actors-who are the Soviet secret police--utterly to eliminate that part of the Polish population refusing to accept Soviet domination. There is neither freedom nor democracy under the Lublin group.

Tens of thousands of its rightful citizens are fighting with the Allies, other tens of thousands-even if we think only of the area west of the so-called Curzon Line-are still in Russia and Siberia, whither they were deported in 1940. How fair, then, can be the elections promised at Yalta?

We are all familiar with "No taxation without representation," and "Give me liberty or give me death!" What is the difference between those proud American slogans and the Polish "Nothing about us without us?" Yet we presume to settle matters most vital to Polish national life without one Pole being invited to the conference table.

POLAND TREATED AS ENEMY, NOT AS LOYAL ALLY

A peace attained by appeasement, if it be attained, is an unjust peace. We have had it dinned in our ears from the day the war began that an unjust peace will never endure. Thus the President himself and many of bur officials have spoken. To quote Senator Vandenburg, "In my opinion no permanent peace is possible without a constant, conscious mandate to seek and maintain justice as the basis of peace."

At Yalta, Poland the ally received worse treatment than did Germany the enemy. Germany is to be administered by a commission from the chief four of the United Nations. This the Polish Government had previously asked for Poland until such time as a permanent Polish Government could be established; and was refused. Poland had to accept Soviet administration alone.

According to Yalta, Germany the aggressor may or may not lose 12 to 15% of its territory, as the determination of Poland's western frontier is left for the peace conference. Poland, defender of liberty, is to surrender 42 per cent of her lands immediately. German prisoners of the Allies will be safe, well fed, clothed, and housed. Polish soldiers fighting alongside British, American, and French will be unable to return to their homeland, yet no provision whatever is made for them.

WHAT AMERICA CAN DO

To quiet our consciences we are told that perfectionism is unattainable and must not be expected. That is not an excuse for abandoning ideals, rather, an incentive to strive toward them.

America can insist upon the Soviet Union changing its policy toward Poland and other neighbor nations. If the Soviets refuse, then we can refuse them further aid. If we must now make all the concessions when Stalin speaks, what chance will there be for us to act independently when much of Europe is under Soviet control or influence--a situation forecast for 1946 by many qualified observers.

It is likewise conceded in informed circles that the USSR will be powerful in China. Iran is being prepared for the picking. India is a source of extreme British uneasiness. Unless we wake up, the Soviet Union may confront us some fine morning with the fait accompli of European and Asiatic hegemony.

Then we would have problems indeed. How could American agriculture and industry ever hope to compete with Russia in world markets? What would then happen to American wages and living standards?

POLAND'S INDEPENDENCE VITAL TO ENDURING PEACE

The Polish-Soviet problem ceased to be Polish-Soviet at Teheran and became American-British-Soviet. The Yalta decisions in February, 1945, only increased British and American responsibility for insisting on a more nearly tolerable and enduring settlement-not by so-called "realistic" power-politics masquerading as military expediency, but in terms of Poland's just claims to freedom and independence.

In striving to save the integrity and independence of Poland, Americans are not being romantic, impossibly idealistic, or even altruistic, but actually acting in defense of enduring peace. Great patience, skill, understanding, and resoluteness--particularly resoluteness--will be required, but it is America's duty, even for selfish reasons, to convince the Soviet Union that friendly neighbors are a much greater asset than hostile subjects, in peace or war.

[Editor's Note: Unfortunately, as we know, the world did not listen to the warnings issued in the above writing.]

--Conclusion--