AND NOW POLAND? .
THERE are many signs that the Russians may be on the brink of repeating in Poland the invasion and repression to which they have subjected with impunity the heroic people of Hungary. The bellicose attitude of the Soviet leaders, and especially Marshal Zhukov and the military men, may arise from that hysterical incomprehension of the forces at work which has been such a feature of their recent pronouncements. It none the less constitutes a mortal danger. There have been reports of Russian troop concentrations on the Polish frontiers and within Poland. This week's attempt by the Polish Stalinist Klosiewicz to provoke Gomulka into anti-Soviet revelations had the air of a well-planned manoeuvre. And the closest observers feel that the Russians are ready to move at small provocation. Now the news of Marshal Rokossovsky's `resig-, nation' has come—perhaps enough to tip the balance. In any case, it is difficult to see how Gomulka can indefinitely keep matters so that he is just acceptable to the Russians and Poles simultaneously.
The past month has shown that the Western Powers have no policy at all in Europe. The routine and useless placing of the Hungarian question before the Security Council was a gesture masquerading as action. But we have now had titne, or so one hopes, to think. It is certainly the occasion, as Professor Setcn- Watson suggested in last week's Spectator, for one of those agonising reappraisals. No one imagines that we are likely to start a world war to save Poland. So we are left with negotia- tion. This need have nothing of appeasement about it : while offering concessions we can require equally substantial on es from the Russians. Professor Seton-Watson suggested that a suitable quid pro quo for a Russian withdrawal from Poland and other East European countries might be a genuine neutral- isation of Germany. And other possibilities have suggested themselves. There is no sort of guarantee that the Russians would accept such proposals. But at the moment there is no Western initiative at all. We just drift, as in the Thirties, from fait accompli to fait accompli. The danger is pressing. So is the opportunity—of that liberation of the Eastern European peoples for which Western statesmen have so often expressed their hopes. Our Government should cease merely to observe; it should act.
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