GalleryIntroduction
SOVIET RUSSIA'S severance of relations with the Polish Government-in-Exile, over the Nazi-inspired charge that the Russians murdered 10,000 Polish army officers, shows clearly the danger to the United Nations of the splitting tactics engineered by Hitler and definitely helped along by the general campaign of anti-Soviet propaganda carried on during recent months in Britain and America.
According to the London Bureau of the New York Herald Tribune,
"It is a safe assumption that the Poles would not have taken so tough an attitude toward the Soviet Government if it had not been for the widespread support Americans have been giving them in the cases of Henry Ehrlich and Victor Alter."1
It is significant, too, to note, as Professor Lange2 of the University of Chicago has pointed out, that the American Friends of Poland, an anti-Soviet organization under the wing of the Polish Embassy, counts among its members some of America's foremost isolationists and America Firsters such as Colonel Langhorn, its chairman; General Wood, Mr. John Cudahy, Mr. Robert Hall McCormick and Miss Lucy Martin. These individuals have all been leading advocates of a negotiated peace with Hitler at the expense of Soviet Russia.
Mr. Walter Lippmann well sums up the matter in his column "Today and Tomorrow" when he states that the net effect of American public opinion has been "to mislead the Polish Government into taking risks it could not afford to take and to provoke the Russian Government into forcing a showdown." The bitter truth to which these various considerations point is that we here in the United States share the responsibility for this grave situation. And we now have the obligation of avoiding any further action that will result in dividing us from our great Russian ally.
The Soviet-Polish situation constitutes a real test of the sincerity of America's claims of friendship for the Soviet Union. Influential persons and newspapers in this country nave been placing equal responsibility for the crisis on the U.S.S.R. when it is perfectly clear that the blame rests on Nazi Germany and the reactionary, diehard Russophobes in the Polish Government-In-Exile. It is extremely important that we understand precisely where the guilt lies and that we make clear our confidence in the integrity of our Soviet ally and her devotion to our common cause, which has been sealed with the blood of so many millions of her people. Certainly the acts of the Polish Government have not been such as to warrant our confidence.
Soviet-Polish relations have unfortunately been marked by a long series of Polish provocations, official and unofficial. There was no move on the part of the Polish Government-in-Exile to repudiate or counteract anti-Soviet agitation by Polish newspapers and organizations. The agreement to leave the settlement of boundary issues until after the war was broken by Sikorski's statement of last December insisting on the terms of the compulsive Treaty of Riga, which is discussed in this pamphlet. This was promptly made the occasion for a rancorous campaign disruptive to Allied unity by Polish reactionary circles in England and their friends in other countries. The Polish army formed on Soviet soil was withdrawn on Sikorski's orders to Iran at the very height of the Stalingrad campaign, then hanging in the balance. Polish guerrilla activities were discouraged. The shameful anti-Soviet agitation around the Alter-Ehrlich case was followed by the collaboration with Goebbels' propaganda around the German mass murders of Poles.
The Soviet-Polish crisis further brings out the fact that the new wave of anti-Soviet propaganda which has arisen recently in the United States should cause gravest concern to every patriotic American. For this campaign against the U.S.S.R., covering many different issues and stirring up old fears and prejudices, threatens to undermine American-Soviet friendship, which is so essential for victory over the Axis and for the establishment of enduring peace.
The anti-Soviet forces in our country have never abandoned the disastrous and discredited policy that culminated at Munich. They include all those elements whose hatred of Soviet Russia is greater than their hatred of fascism. These circles are willing to prolong the war indefinitely, even to risk our ultimate defeat, our own country's freedom and security, in the hope that Hitler will bleed to death the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The American people must be vigilant in identifying these disruptive forces in our midst, in exposing them, combating them, depriving them of influence and power by building an indestructible unity with our Allies.
To this all-important end this pamphlet by Alter Brody, issued by Soviet Russia Today, makes a notable contribution by telling the truth about the Soviet-Polish situation and developing its full implications.
CORLISS LAMONT
STALIN ON POLISH-SOVIET RELATIONS
REPLYING on May 4 to two questions put to him by New York Times correspondent Ralph Parker, Joseph Stalin declared that the Soviet Government unquestionably desires a strong and independent Poland after the defeat of Hitler's Germany, and that in his opinion post-war relations between the two countries should he based "upon the fundament of solid good neighborly relations and mutual respect, or, should the Polish people so desire, upon the fundament of an alliance providing for mutual assistance against the Germans as the chief enemies of the Soviet Union and Poland."
| 1 | Henryk Ehrlich and Wiktor Alter were leaders of the Bund, the Jewish trade union organization. There were widespread protests (which Lamont labeled elsewhere as "shameful anti-Soviet agitation") when the Soviets admitted to having executed them. |
| 2 | As noted in our introduction, Lange was a Soviet agent. |
