A VANISHED GENERAL

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 116, 12 November 1927, Page 20

A VANISHED GENERAL

STORY OF A SECRET POLISH

PRISON.

A sensation , was caused in "Warsaw recently by the appearance of a special' edition of the Conservative newspaper " Rzeezpospolita," stating that General Zagorski (the popular Opposio'n leader, who mysteriously disappeared on his release from prison some time ago) is alive, and is being kept secretly interned by the authorities in Westerplatte Island, Danzig, and that by!means of a trick he succeeded in getting his custodians to forward a letter written by him'to the committee in charge of tho "Aviators' Victims' Fund." The. copies containing the news have not been confiscated, and there appears to be every evidence that the letter has actually been received and is already in the hands of the military authorities. The other Conservative newspapers reprint the statement. T^ho newspapers which are sympathetic towards the-Government-do not deny the authenticity of the letter, but allege that it was written by General Zagorski from his hiding-place, and that there is no truth in the report that he is being interned by the Government. . So iar no official announcement has been made on the .matter,, but experts have pronounced the letter "genuine. It bears the Danzig postmark, and contained 40 zlotys 'about £1) as a contribution to the fund mentioned. The semi-official explanation is that General Zagorski is at present in Paris,and that he got a friend who was going to Danzig to take the letter and post it.

Tho report that the Generall has been secretly interned on Westerplatte Island is ridiculed in semiofficial quarters, where it is pointed out that the nature of the locality is such that secret detention there of anybody would be impossible. The Polish Commission-er-General'at Danzig denies the report.

The Zagorski case, adds Beuter, has frequently been described in tho Polish Press as a second Dreyfus case. General Zagorski was one of the generals who remained loyal to the Government when Marshal Pilsudski advanced on the capital in May, 1926, and effected the coup d'etat which gave him his present quasi-dictatorship. He was subsequently arrested on technical charges, connected with the purchases effected while he was head of the Polish Flying Corps, and was in prison for fifteen months until his sudden re-ap-pearanme and almost immediate disappearance early in August last. The circumstances of his disappearance are still a mystery. .