THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, May 1, 1943. RUSSIA AND POLAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25214, 1 May 1943, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, May 1, 1943. RUSSIA AND POLAND

There are ominous signs of a widening rather than a narrowing of the breach which the crafty machinations of Dr Goebbels have helped to bring about between the Russian and Polish Governments. As was to be expected, the Nazi propagandists are working their initial advantage to the utmost, by means of the dissemination of new atrocity stories designed to inflame both Russian and Polish opinion to a degree that may well increase the difficulty of the Anglo-American task of effecting a swift reconciliation. And the Nazis are, of course, not ignoring the existence, among the Poles themselves, of political divisions which must make doubly delicate any solution of the problem of frontier demarcation which lies at the root of RussoPolish differences. The Moscow correspondent of Reuter’s was probably correct in reporting, a day or two ago, that the Soviet Government was ready to resume diplomatic relations “ with a reconstituted Polish Government which is prepared immediately to negotiate a realistic agreement on territorial questions.” Such a Government, it is plain, is not that which is presided over in London by General Sikorski, however reasonable that Government may consider its post-war frontier proposals to be. M. Stalin has repeatedly assured General Sikorski and the world that Russia wishes to see a “strong and independent Poland” emerge after the war; but this, unfortunately, does not imply a Poland constituted, territorially, according to the pre-war pattern. The Moscow correspondent of The Times may be credited with presenting the Soviet case accurately when he wrote, on April 28, that the Soviet Government was prepared to recognise “only a Polish Government which once and for all silences expressions of opinion prejudicial to Russia’s present and future interests.” An attempt would probably be made, the correspondent added, to raise Polish forces in Russia “ whose only objective will be the ejection of the enemy from territory recognised by the Soviet Government as Polish, and whose commanders will be free from control by politicians who still maintain Poland’s right to rule Ukrainian and White Russian peoples.” This uncompromising statement of the case uncovers the political aspects of the dispute in all their complexity. The Russian official attitude, as recently set out, is that the Ukrainian and White Russian parts of Poland, the former Baltic States of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania—which were organised under the Soviet Government after the occupation of September, 1939—and the Rumanian province of Bessarabia are integral parts of the Soviet Union. The view held in Moscow, with particular application to Poland, is that the Atlantic Charter’s recognition of the rights of peoples “ includes the rights of the Ukrainians and the White Russians to be united,” and that the Charter “certainly cannot be cited as supporting any Polish right to such territory.” In brief, Russia wants the areas specified because they formerly belonged to Russia and are still regarded as Russian. The Government in Mocsow declares that no conflict can be discovered between this claim and its disavowal of any desire either to seize foreign territories or subjugate foreign peoples. The Polish Government in exile insists that the pre-war territorial status of Poland must be restored, rejecting, it would seem, the inference, taken from M. Stalin s statement that there must be a strong post-war Poland, and that the Poles must look to German East Prussia for territorial gains or replacements. This is the stage at which the dispute rests, with its present lamentable complications of official estrangement and bitterness and their damaging implications against the essential unity of the Allied cause.