T S * T A B L E T Oetob<* 27th, 195«, V O L . 70S, N o , 6075

TH E TABLET

Fubtlshfid aft a Ne^troapet

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

OCTOBER 27th, 1956

NINEPENCE

The Struggle for Jordan : Ephemeral Frontiers Poland ArOUSed : Warsaw Revisited in Momentous Days. By K. M. Smogorzewski

Russia and the Olympic Games l Amateurs and Shamateurs. By Sir Arnold Lunn

The Supply of Teachers: A Problem of Distribution

Belloc and the War of 1914-18: “ Land and W ater.” By Robert Speaight

Mr. A lle gros Pelican: The Scrolls for the Masses. By Geoffrey Graystone, S.M.

Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

CRACKS IN THE MONOLITH

I F M. Khrushchev is one day indicted in Moscow it will not be difficult for the prosecutor to say that his ineptitude endangered the Soviet control over Poland. It was his sudden descent upon Warsaw last weekend, with M. Molotov among his companions, which did more than anything else to make M. Gomulka overnight into something like a national hero. M. Gomulka is not on his record a man to commend himself to Poland as a great liberator; nor is he likely to be regarded as a liberator for long, whatever the course of events in the months ahead. He was happy to be a nominee of Moscow when he became Vice-Premier in the Provisional Government that was announced on the last day of 1944, and, real as his objection now doubtless is to bullying from the Kremlin, he remains a man greatly preferring association with the Soviet Government to association with Western Europe, to which Poland belongs. If he became a “ Titoist ” seven years ago, it was because he had quarrelled with the ruling triumvirate of MM. Bierut, Berman and Mine. A great mistake will be made if he is saluted now as the true spokesman for his country, when what he really is is an angry Communist with old scores to settle.

For months past now there has been a real pressure in Poland for more liberal institutions, but it did not begin under the inspiration of M. Gomulka, or even of Marshal Tito. It began when M. Khrushchev delivered his momentous attaojc on the memory of Stalin; nowhere was his speech more quickly in circulation than in Poland, and nowhere was there more immediate emphasis on the “ crimes ” that it was now permitted to attribute to Stalin. M. Bierut died of shock on his way home from hearing in Moscow what M. Khrushchev had to say; Berman disappeared soon afterwards; and at the beginning of this month Mine, the economic dictator of Poland for twelve years past, disappeared also, the last of the trio who had controlled the country, under Soviet direction, since the war. Now the Soviet Marshal Rokossowski has been dropped from the councils of the Polish Communist Party, although retaining his ministerial office. Meanwhile, in the Sejm, or Parliament, in the trade unions, in the judiciary and in other sides of the national life there have been, all through the summer, many signs of a genuine striving towards freedom. But if M. Gomulka is now the most prominent name, it is not because he has had much to do with this; it is because the most that the Poles can do for the present is to support him.

M. Gomulka, who is alive today because he was in prison under Pilsudski when other Polish Communists were killed in the Soviet Union by Stalin, has come back to power as a man who has proved the sincerity of his convictions as a Polish Communist. The non-Communist majority in Poland will obviously, prefer a Polish to a Russian Communist; but hitherto CofrhTilrfiism has rested on the power of Russia, and in this is very unlike Yugoslavia. Poland has slowly but steadily become more and more ungovernable for lack of reliable Communist cadres. If the Russians leave the Polish Communists alone, the Polish Communists will have to call on non-Communist parties to help govern the country; and the price for this will be at the very least a tempering of the rigours of Marxian teaching.

M. Gomulka, in the full speech he made at the weekend, saying he knew well that it might be his last chance of addressing his party, reaffirmed his basic tenet, which is directly contrary to what most of his compatriots believe. What he calls the exploitation of man by man, they call the right of man to own productive property, the right of a man to have a farm and to employ other men to look after the livestock and sow and reap the crops — an immemorial system, yielding much superior results to those obtained on the collective farm.

The most dangerous moment for an institution is when it starts reforming itself, and this truth has been borne in upon the successors of Stalin as they have sought to mitigate some of the more blatantly indefensible features of his rule over Russia, and over the satellites whom he collected into his Empire in 1945. The world has seen the ludicrous spectacle of people who proclaimed that they had come to stop the exploitation of man by man proceeding to the exploitation of nation by nation. The root cause of the explosion in Poland has been the exploitation of Poland by Russia in the first