Where the News Ends

...ThIS column has never functioned as a ahrine for burning incense to Stalin...

...A COLLECTIVE interview which was recently erranged for American correspondents with the soldiers of the Polish army that has been formed on Soviet territory might well suggest to the Soviet dictator the advisability of giving up a policy baaed on forcible Sovietization with the aid of a few Communist or opportunist puppets...

...Such a solution would assign to Poland a considerably more favorable frontier than the Curson Line, while providing for a plebiscite in solidly . Ukrainian districts and for mutual cultural autonomy for Poles who might be left on the Soviet aide of the border and for Ukrainians on the Polish side...

...A fair solution here would be to offer the inhabitants of this area a choice, in a free, secret plebiscite, between association with Poland and with the Soviet Ukraine...

...Stalin is anything but a hail fellow well tea type of ruler...

...It is within the bounds of possibility, if not of probability, that Stalin, once convinced that only an agreement with the legitimate Polish Government will possess any meaning or value, would be willing to cement such an agreement with the cession of Vilna and Lvov, towns that are of little significance to the Soviet Union, but that possess great historical, cultural and (in the case of Lvov) economic.value to Poland...

...If this objective was p* splitting of Polish-American opinion it has not been achieved, as the resolutions of the representative Polish gathering at Buffalo which will be held at the end of this month will certainly show...

...It is distinctly to the credit of President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull that they did not follow Winston Churchill in admitting the justice of Stalin's annexationist claims in Poland, Finland and the Baltic States...

...The translator was the pro-Soviet Professor Oscar Lange, who arrived in Moscow at the same time as Father Orlemanskl...

...It ia quite eontoirablo that a reactionary whom the majority of democratic Poles would want to remove from public enVee weald find his popular prestige en heneed if a peremptory demand for his elimination should emaaate from Moscow...

...He is usually inaccessible to foreigners...

...The Soviet regime haa not invited a repetition of the Kuusinen fiasco by recognising its puppet "Union of Polish Patriots" as a legitimate Polish Government...

...Yet it would be unwise to overlook a few recent indications that Stalin may be contemplating, in relation toward Poland, a policy that would be more moderate, more reasonable, and more in line with the true interests of the peoples of the Soviet Union...

...So it would be reasonable to expect that the interview would not dwell on some of the less plessant experiences of the Poles in Russia, especially as it had to be filtered through the Soviet censorship in Moscow...

...Bat it is also possible that the Orlemanskl interview may have been an upSonyentienal method of showing a disposition to respect Polish national snd religious susceptibilities A commentator who often serves as a weather vane of official opinion and who, in the past has been almost indecently eager to write off Eastern Poland as a Soviet acquisition has suddenly discovered merit in the Polish claims to Vilna and Lvov...

...Some aspects of the Moscow visit of Father Orlemanaki are obscure...

...But the Soviet dictator has proved himself a shrewd ruler, capable of learning from mistakes, and infinitely more aware of the facts of life than the motley chorus of Communists, fellowtravelers, amateur Machiavellian power politicians and well-meaning ignoramuses in the history, polities and ethnography of Eastern Europe who have been clamoring for an East European Munich...

...A firmer, more positive American policy might have yielded still better results...

...But perhaps one cannot expect too much of American foreign policy when American public opinion is so ill informed that the editor of a well-known weekly believes that Lvov belonged to Russia before the First World War and a very famous publisher was amazed when I told him that the Ukrainians are distinguished by language, nationality and historical fate from the Greet Russians...

...Politically and economically, a miniature independent Ukrainian state in this region would scarcely be feasible...

...After all, it would only be confirming their natural state...

...With negligible exceptions one can expect that Poles who have been deported to the Soviet Union will be the staunchest champions of their country's" national independence in the future, and the least susceptible to Communist propaganda.'' Stalin knows the reality of Polish nationalism from experience...

...In the nature of things, final proof of Stalin's expressed desire to see a "strong independent Poland" can only be given when the last Soviet soldier quits Polish territory after the end of the war and the Polish people are left free to choose the government they desire...

...Local order could be maintained by a United Nations police force, recruited from nationals of countries thst hsd no interest in the esteem* of the vote...

...This reported demand for a pnrfe ef the Government Is inapt te the hurt degree as a mesas of winning friends asm baiaencbtg psaels, or of obtaining in the future Poland a regime genuinely moadly is the Soviet Union...

...Human nature is . like that...

...The families of these Polish soldiers were in the Soviet Union and they were themselves dependent on the Soviet regime for food and supplies...

...This change of judg , went coincides with rumors that the Soviet Government might consent to a frontier considerably more favorable to Poland than the Carson Line, if a few objectionable figures would be dropped from the Polish Government...

...AFTER the mixture of brutality and chicanery that hai characterized Soviet policy toward - Poland rumora of "improving relations" must be regarded with considerable reserve until they are confirmed by some positive step indicating a change of policy in Moscow...

...But every soldier who was questioned announced his preference for Poland, as against the Soviet Union, as his future residence, regardless of where the boundary might be drawn...

...The correspondents also reported a strongly negative attitude toward collective farming on the part of the soldiers...

...It is to be hoped that Amnican diplomacy is working for an Atlantic Charter' solution of the PolishSoviet impasse...

...Polish soldiers in this frame of mind are not likely to serve as a pretorian guard for the subjugation of their own country to Soviet rule...

...Te be fair and convincing, such a plebiscite skouM be held without the presence of either Soviet or Polish troops or police...

...There ia a considerable area of southeastern Poland, the regions of Polesia, Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, where there ia a clear Ukrainian majority...

...But to anyone familiar with Soviet methods it is obvious that the initiative for the trip proceeded from the Kremlin...

...Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENHY CHAMBERLIN Toward a Polish-Soviet Understanding...

...He took part in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920, when Lenin believed that it would be possible "to * break the crust of Polish bourgeois resistance with the bayonets of the Red Army.-' Along with other Soviet military and political leaders he experienced a shock of disillusionment when the Warsaw workers, instead of organizing an uprising to greet the advancing Bed Army, came out with arma in their hands to fight it...

...A little known Catholic prjest could never have got into Russia, much less into the Kremlin, unless Stalin had felt that his visit would serve some useful political objective...

...That he would thereby make fools of his naive admirers in this country who have been insisting that, for the most pressing ethnographic and strategic reasons, the Soviet Union must have first, the Ribbontrop-Molotov, then the Curson Line, would probably bother him very little...