THE POLISH CRISIS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20870, 9 November 1929, Page 12

THE POLISH CRISIS.

Jlaeshal Pilscdski, who came into power in Poland three years ago as the outcome of a coup d’etat, has been engaged so repeatedly in squabbles with the advocates of constitutional government that the events which have been reported in recent cable messages indicating that his position is as precarious as ever will hardly have excited much surprise. The opposition forces, led by the Socialists, have become bolder in expressing their

resentment of Pilsudski’s high-handed methods, and there have been signs that the Marshal’s power is failing with his health. Mr Bernard Shaw has revealed that Pilsudski’s character was the inspiration for the good and wise King Magnus in “ The Apple Cart,” the satire on democracy which is now being produced at Home. King Magnus is surrounded by a foolish Cabinet of Minister?, including even a foolish Socialist Minister, in a Utopian future where only the less sane portion of the community takes part in Parliamentary elections. Mr Shaw finds Pilsudski a good and wise ruler because he has made no change in the political structure of the State, but “ had a genera! election and afterwards adjourned Parliament and took power into his own hands.” Since Mr Shaw wrote “ The Apple Cart,” however, a new Cabinet has taken office in following upon Pilsudski’s outburst in which he described the Sejm as a “ zoo full of monkeys,” and upon M. Bartel’s resignation of the premiership. Nevertheless, Marshal Pilsudski *s antipathy to parliamentary institutions is notorious, and the cablegrams reporting the military occupation of the parliamentary’ lobby echo doubts that were expressed by the Warsaw correspondent of the New York Times, in the statement that the marshal is hard beset by his opponents and, owing to poor health, is losing his grip on the reins of government. The fate of a regime in Poland which the Manchester Guardian calls “a kind of semi-military Fascist directorate ” still hangs in- the balance, but increasing discontent in Poland seems to make it necessary for Marshal,Pilsudski either to assert an open dictatorship or to submit to a return to responsible Cabinet Government in place of, the present sy*tcm of veiled dictatorship behind the parliamentary facade.