POLISH ASPIRATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17333, 3 December 1919, Page 9

POLISH ASPIRATIONS.

CLAIM TO EAST GALICIA.

BRITISH OPPOSITION. PADEREWSKI'S DIFFICULTY. By Telegraph—Press Association— (Received 6.30 p.m.) A. and N.Z. LONDON. Dec. 1. A message from Warsaw states that all M. Paderewski's Ministers have tendered their resignations. M. Paderewski is forming a new Cabinet. The correspondent of the Morning Post at Warsaw summing up the situation in Poland says that M. Paderewski's position is hopeless, and his resignation is expected any day, owing to his failure to secure East Galicia from the Allies. France and the United States were willing but Britain refused. The Polish army made great sacrifices to secure East Galicia, and there is an intense public feeling that these sacrifices should not be made in vain.

The Poles are willing to march to Petrograd against the Bolsheviks, but require the Allies' mandate, financial assistance, and recognition of their claims in East Galicia. The Polish army consists of 600,000 men, the largest standing army in the world to-day. It has been admirably drilled by France, and equipped by the United States. It now holds the Beresina River and Dvinsk, and is thus 'favourably placed to operate against Petrograd and Moscow, the snow and ice of December providing j favourable campaigning conditions.

East Galicia, claimd by both Poland and | the Ukraine, comprises over 30,000 square miles of territory, containing more than 4,000,000 inhabitants. The country, though agriculturally one of the most neglected regions of Europe, is rich in oilfields. Moreover, its absoption by Poland would mean a junction between Poland and Roumania. Fierce fighting took place between the Poles and the Ukrainians during the latter part of last year and the beginning of this year, in which the Ukrainians were defeated. The Poles are now in actual possession of the greater part of East Galicia, including Lemberg and Prsemysl, while the Ukraine is still torn by internal dissensions and menaced by Bolsheviks within and without. A press correspondent who travelled through East Galicia in June last described it as " the slum of Europe." "Village life in East Galicia," he stated, is comparable with nothing so much as village life along some of those long, little-travelled rivers of South and Central America. Once one gets beyond Lvoff the standard of civilisation is no higher in East Galicia. The similarity goes even further. Exactly as in South and Central America—Africa would probably serve as well as a parallel—so in Galicia, the houses of the people are thatched. The chief observable difference is that in the tropics walls are generally of bamboo, whereas here they are of stones evened off with mod Inevitably there are the same mangy hounds prowling hungrily about, the _ same lean cattle, sometimes almost astride the thresholds of the homes, the same half-nude children, the same filth, the same apathy, the same indolence, the fame barefooted men and women -with stringy, unkempt hair— and women who have never known the first decencies of manners or dress nor the meaning of cleanliness and ordersimply standing or squatting immobile by the hour in their squalor, too stupid to be bored, too benighted .to understand their degradation, living out their inarticulate lives on spiritual and intellectual planes not conspicuously higher than that of the creese and cows and everlastingly scratching dogs, with which, to all intents and pur- ■ poses', they seem to dwell. That is the j village life of the greater portion of East i Galicia, precisely as it is the village life 1 of, for example, nearly all of the int-rior of Nicaragua One is no barter than the other. To stamp it with a word— ignorance; and it is ignorance that has East Galician agriculture in a choking hand."