PART I
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE NATIONAL UNITY
The Polish Government, like the majority of democratic governments in this
war, is a coalition Government; this means it does not consist of one party
or of privileged parties but of a combination of political parties. The
four largest and most influential groups representing the greater part of
the Polish nation agreed to forget the differences dividing them and to
concentrate on their common interests and common cause, and work together
for the early liberation of their country. For this period of cooperation
these parties have established a common political and social platform.
The Government of National Unity is composed of representatives of the
following four parties:
(1) The Christian Democratic Labor Party
(2) The National Democratic Party
(3) The Polish Peasant Party and
(4) The Polish Socialist Party (P.P.S.)
Who is Who in the PolishCabinet.
The present Government, formed after the death of General Sikorski, consists
of three representatives of the Peasant Party, three representatives of the
Polish Socialist Party, two representatives of the Christian Democratic
Labor Party and two of the National Democratic Party. Three members of the
Cabinet have no party allegiance.
The various ministerial portfolios are held as follows:
Prime Minister-Stanislaw Mikolajczyk (Peasant Party),
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry, Commerce and
Shipping Jan
Kwapinski (Polish Socialist party),
Minister of Foreign Affairs---Tadeusz Romer (no party affiliation),
Minister of National Defense-General Marian Kukiel (no party affilia-tion),
Minister of the Interior-Wladyslaw Banaczyk (Peasant Party),
Minister of Information-Professor Stanislaw Kot (Peasant Party),
Minister of Finance-Dr. Ludwik Grosfeld (Polish Socialist Party),
Minister of Labor and Social Welfare-Jan Stanczyk (Polish Socialist Party),
Minister of Justice-Professor Waclaw Kamarnicki (National Democratic Party),
Minister of State (Peace Conference Planning) - Marian Seyda (National
Democratic Party),
Minister of State (Polish Administrative Planning)-Karol Popiel (Christian
Demo-cratic Labor Party),
Minister of Education - Rev. Zygmunt Kaczynski (Christian Democratic Labor
Party),
Minister of State in the Middle East - Henryk Strassburger (no party
affiliation).
As far as their professions are concerned, two of the thirteen members of
the Polish Cabinet are farmers (one of these being Prime Minister Mikolajczyk),
two are workmen, three professors of University, three journalists, one lawyer,
one military man and one career diplomat.
STANISLAW MIKOLAJCZYK
The nature of this outline does not permit of detailed biographies of each
of the members of the Cabinet. However, in order to outline the type of men
the Polish Government is composed, it is useful to present the biographies
of its leading personalities: tile Prime Minister and his Deputy.
Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, (correct pronunciation: Mee-ko-lai-chik), probably
the youngest Premier in the world, was born in 1901 in Westphalia, to where
his parents had emigrated from Western Poland. He returned to Poland
(Province of Poznan) as a boy of ten.
By his sixteenth year he had started to work in a sugar-beet refinery and
became an active participant in Polish patriotic organizations which were
preparing an insurrection against the German rulers.
By 1920, when young Mikolajczyk was nineteen, he joined the Army as a
private, and took part in the War against the Bolsheviks under the gates of
Warsaw. Wounded in the trenches, he returned to take over the fifty-acre
farm his father had bought.
His early interest in the peasant movement led to further activity in
politics and after holding a number of offices in the communal
self-government of his own province, he was elected to the Sejm (Polish
Diet) in his twenty-ninth year.
In 1935 he became Vice-Chairman of the executive committee of the Polish
Peasant Party, the largest enfranchised group, and in 1937 was called upon
to accept the Presidency of the party.
When the present War against Germany broke out, lie enlisted voluntarily as
private and served in the September campaign in defense of Warsaw. After
the end of the campaign he escaped to Hungary, where he was interned.
The idle life of an internee was something to which he was temperamentally
unsuited. He organized his ultimate escape by way of Yugoslavia and Italy
into France.
On rejoining the Polish Government in France, he became Paderewski's deputy
Chairman of the Polish National Council. In 1941 he was appointed Minister
of the Interior and became Sikorski's Deputy Prime Minister.
It is Mikolajczyk who in this capacity coordinates all communications
between the various government departments and officials and their "opposite
numbers" in occupied Poland. His office handles all underground finances, a
perilous undertaking in itself, including a recently completed comprehensive
census. Mikolajczyk's name is a household word among the underground, and
repre-sentatives of the United Nations all know him as the custodian of the
most extensive and most reliable black list of Nazi criminals in all
occupied Europe.
As an outspoken leader of the Polish Peasant Party, he was for many years
the most prominent representative of this largest single political factor in
Poland's domestic affairs, and in every aspect of his public life has
expressed his firm belief in democracy and world cooperation.
Mr. Mikolajczyk's family is in Poland and a few months ago the Polish
Premier received information that his wife has been imprisoned in one of the
notorious concentration camps in Poland.
Mr. Milan Hodza, former Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, recently described
Mr. Mikolajczyk as follows:
"Mr. Mikolajczyk, himself a small farmer, bad been an outstanding leader of
Polish democratic peasants for eighteen years prior to this war.
"When Mr. W. Witos, now a Nazi prisoner, then the Chairman of the Polish
Peasant Party, was persecuted by the Beck dictatorship and sentenced to
three years in jail, Mr. Mikolajczyk was ready to take over as one of the
party's deputy leaders. He fought dictators for nearly a decade. It was
largely owing to his cooperation that the most radical Polish peasant groups
were able to unite and form the largest Polish democratic party which in
coalition with socialistic workers and other groups undis-putedly represents
in the exile the overwhelming majority of Polish democracy.
"Mr. Mikolajczyk has been for more than twenty years, an outstanding leader
of his people as well as a representative of central European rural
democ-racy held in high esteem as a brave fighter against totalitarian
intrigues in central Europe." (NY Times, December 30th, 1943).
JAN KWAPINSKI
Jan Kwapinski (correct pronunciation: Kv-a-pin-ski), Deputy Prime Minister
anti Minister of Industry, Commerce and Shipping, son of a worker and a
metal worker himself, has long been one of the most prominent figures in
Poland's labor and polit-ical movement.
Born in Warsaw in 1885, his life reflects the turbulent history of the
Polish patriotic revolutionary movement. From his early youth he took an
active part in the underground organization. He joined the Polish Socialist
Party in 1902 and played an active role in the anti-Czarist uprising of
1905. When the revolt failed, Kwapinski made his escape to Cracow (then in
Austrian Poland), where he continued his political activities, After his
return to Russian Poland in 1906 he took part in underground revolutionary
organization. The following year he was arrested by the Czarist police and
sentenced to 15 years hard labor. Having organized the prisoners' rebellion
in the Lomza Prison, he managed to escape, but was caught and removed to
Orel Prison, where he remained until 1917, when the Russian Revolution set
him free.
Back in Poland in 1918, he was elected to the Central Committee of the
Polish Socialist Party, of which he later became Vice-Chairman. His concern
for the fate of the Polish workers and peasants led to his appointment,
during the twenty years of Polish independence, as President of the Farm
Workers Union and Polish Trade Union Congress.
When the Soviets entered Poland, Kwapinski, who remained in Poland dur-ing
both invasions, was deported to Siberia. Released after the signing of
the Polish-Russian treaty in July, 1941, he proceeded to I.ondon where lie
was appointed to the Polish Cabinet and was made chairman of the Committee
of the Polish Socialist Party. Since General Sikorski's death (in July,
1943), Mr. Kwapinski holds the post of Vice-Premier.
THE WAR PARLIAMENT
The accord of the Polish Government with public opinion in Poland was
created not only through the establishment of the multipartite government,
but also by setting up a representative body of the nation in the form
of the National Council.
This National Council in which are represented the most important trends of
the Polish political thought (among them representatives of the Polish
Jewry), is a substitute for the parliament and was appointed because no
election to parliament could be held in occupied Poland. Many of the
members of the Council escaped to London from the German or Russian
occupation, as repre-sentatives of underground organizations-some came from
the Soviets when, after two years of deportation (1939-1941), they were
released from prisons and camps after the outbreak of the Soviet-German war.
The National Council held its first meeting on December 9, 1939. Its
successive chairmen were lgnacy Paderewski, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk (Acting
Chair-man) and Stanislaw Grabski, professor of political economy at the
University of Lwow.
Thus the Polish Government was established and operates on the same
prin-ciples that form the basis of all western democracies, that is, it has
the support of the majority of the nation and is controlled by that nation.
PROGRAM OF WORK.
The personalities were described above. What is then the program of the
Polish Government?
Below is the text of the declaration establishing the program of General
Sikorski's Government, confirmed by the National Council at its meeting of
February 24, 1942:
"The Government of National Unity, called into being by the President of the
Republic in conformity with the Polish Constitution, is the lawful executive
authority of the Polish State. Considering itself as the instrument of the
will of the citizens of the Republic, to whose welfare it is solely devoted,
the Government declares:
"1. The principal object of the Polish Government is to liberate the mother
country and to give it its due position among the independent Nations. It
is pursuing this purpose by ensuring the most effective participation of
Poland and her Armed Forces in the War on the side of the fighting
Democracies, and by aiming to secure for Poland broad direct access to the
sea as well as frontiers which will fully guarantee the safety and
prosperity of the Republic.
"2. Actively participating in the task of building a new world order, the
Polish Government is actuated by the principle that this new order must
ensure a just and lasting peace. Based upon the reciprocal collaboration of
free nations and their individual right to free existence, that peace must
be protected by an organized force in the service of right. Groups of
federated nations formed in Europe, will introduce and secure the new order
and safeguard the world from the dangers of war.
"The Government will demand the complete and effective disarmament of the
aggressors, which would exclude any future aggression, and will require
severe punishment of those responsible for the present war, i.e., Germany
and her Allies. They must be made to suffer the chastisement
they inherit for the injustices, crimes and destruction they have committed,
and at the same time must render full material and moral satisfaction to
those who have been wronged. This is required by the primary and eternal
justice which must govern international relations.
II. "The future political and economic structure of Poland will be
ultimately decided by the Parliament of free Poland, which will be endowed
with legislative power as soon as hostilities have ended. Today, however,
as the moment approaches to decide upon the post-war organization of the
world and of Europe, and when international opinion desires to know the
nature of the future Poland in order to justify its confidence in that
country, the Government of National Unity declares:
"(a) Poland will take her stand on Christian principles and culture.
"(b) The Polish Republic will be a democratic and republican State, strictly
observing the principles of legal Government responsible to a true national
assembly, fully representative of the common will of the people and elected
by the method of general, equal, direct and secret vote. The Polish Nation
unreservedly repudiates all systems of totalitarian govern-ment and forms of
dictatorship, as contrary to the principles of democracy.
"(c) Poland will guarantee and respect the civil rights and liberties of all
citizens loyal to the Republic, regardless of national, religious or racial
differences. Coupled with equality of obligations, equality of rights will
be assured to the national minorities fulfilling their civic duties towards
the State. They will be given the possibility of free political, cultural
and social development.
"Freedom of conscience and expression, of association and assembly will be
fully guaranteed to all. The exercise of justice will be independent of all
influence on the part of the State administration.
"(d) Post-war Poland will endeavor to ensure work and a fair livelihood to
the whole population, thereby removing the scourge of unemployment once and
for all from her territory. Every citizen will possess the right to work as
well as the duty to work, while retaining the free choice of occupation.
National economic policy will be guided by this principle, and will be
subordinated to general principles conforming to the necessity of a planned
post-war reconstruction, industrial development and mobilization of all
productive forces vital to the general welfare.
"A sound agrarian reform, ensuring a just partition of land among the
peasant population should, with the exception of a limited number of model
and experimental farms, create medium-sized but independent, prof-itable and
productive farms worked as a rule by the farmers' households. On the basis
of those legislative, political, economic and social principles we shall
raise the living standards of the mass of peasant toilers, the workers and
the intellectual professions, and assure them their rightful participation
in the development of their own national culture.
"(e) The general economic development of Poland was delayed for political
reasons during the Partitions and is now suffering a setback by the
occupation of the country. The Polish Nation will make every effort to
attain, within the shortest possible time, the level of western European
nations and it desires to collaborate in this respect with other democratic
nations.
"(f) The spirit of self-sacrifice and patriotism as well as sound political
judgment of which our nation has given ample evidence during this war,
demand that the entire public life of Poland be based upon the initiative
and activities of the community itself. In particular, the largest possible
extent of public affairs should be left to the free administration and
deci-sion of autonomous local, economic and professional bodies.
"(g) Poland will possess strong and efficient executive power, capable of
taking speedy action to frustrate intentions hostile to Poland and of
rallying in times of danger all the vital forces of the country."
When Mr. Mikolajczyk took over the office of Prime Minister on General
Sikorski's death, he declared that his Government will continue to pursue
the policy and the program of General Sikorski's Government.
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