POLISH CRUELTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 15, 19 January 1931, Page 7

POLISH CRUELTY.

POLITICAL HORRORS

British M.P. Reveals Election

Brutalities.

PILSUDSKI REGIME

(Cnitec! P.A.—Electric Telegraph— Copyright)

(Received 12 noon.)

LONDON, January IS,

Dr. Marion Phillips, M.P., chief woman officer of the British Labour party, told a Press representative that the Polish elections were responsible for tyranny and brutality.

She has just returned to London, and says some of the brutalities wei:e suggestive of a primeval orientalist and of sadistic terrorism of the worst Russian type. There were hundreds of arrests on trumped-up charges.

Dr. Liebermann, an old member of the Socialist party, was thrust into prison and released after the elections without trial, with 15 gruesome wounds across his body. He is now a permanently broken man. Poland was seething with ferment, for which the Pilsudski Jigimc was responsible.

"I asked them what was for such desperate action," said.Dr. Phillips, "and they said that because the Dcputios had immunity they committed crimes against the penal code, and they considered Polish politicians had to learn to be men with a sense of responsibility.

•"Officials were sent round the villages telling the peasants that if they voted against Pilsudski. taxes would be doubled while the electors in some parts were told that if they did not show the officials what candidate they were voting for, they would be regarded as voting against tho Government.

"Some booths were closed at mid-day hecause it was declared that 100 per .cent had already voted. Some voters, in order to hide their voting papers, carried them in pipes, and others hid them in cartloads of hay. These are merely examples of hundreds of abuses."