RUSSO-POLISH DISPUTE

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23941, 7 May 1943, Page 6

RUSSO-POLISH DISPUTE

Sir, —Your leading article on the Russo-Polish dispute skirts the real issue, which is, that Moscow is rightly distrustful of Sikorski’s refugee administration, and considers it as reactionary as the notoriously pro-Faseist regime of Beck and Smigly-Rydz, who fled the country when the storm they provoked broke upon them, leaving the unarmed, miserable, and underfed peasants and workers to fight tanks and Stukas with their bare hands. And Sikorski has the nerve to speak of Poland as a democracy! The set-up in Poland was similar to that in many other European countries—a handful of wealthy landlords and magnates, a powerful Church, both hand in glove with a reactionary officer class. The same conditions obtained here as in Spain, Hungary, and Italy; in fact, in most European countries the regime was similar, about 2 per cent, ruling the hungry, ignorant, illiterate, miserable 98 per cent, saddled with the three traditional obstacles to progress. —Yours, etc., J. DENNEHY. Haast, May 2, 1943.