POLAND

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1944, Page 4

POLAND

Your article by the Pole, Zygmunt Litjmski, is not likely to further his purpose of reconciliation between Poland and the U.S.S.R. Undoubtedly many Poles suffered much in Russia after September, 1939. but it is hard to find substance for many of the statements the writer makes. He claims that early in 1939 the refusal of Poland to join Germany in attacking Russia saved the U.S.S.R. and Europe, and, incidentally, Poland. He fails to state that the refusal of Poland to accept the promise of aid in which the U.S.S.R. was to join actively, destroyed the greatest hcje of preventing the present v/ar and the overrunning of Poland. He fails to mention that when the Red Army entered Poland the Polish Government had already abandoned the country and was at Cernauti, in Rumania, or that Mr. Churchill him- | self welcomed the Russian entry as a check to the Nazis. He fails to mention that the Polish population of the area occupied by Russia was a dominant minority of some 15 per cent. The vote of the White Russian and Ukrainian peasantry for union with the kindred republics in the U.S.S.R. can reasonably be accepted as a true expression of their desires in view of their previous cultural, economic and political lot within Poland. These eastern territories are not necessary to a strong, independent, democratic Poland, such as all friends of peace wish to see emerge. W. T. G. AIREY.