POLAND: Anything Might Happen

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At Warsaw, Finance Minister Jerzy Zdziechowski announced a program of fiscal reform catering somewhat to the potent Jewish financiers of Poland, by whose cooperation he hoped to balance at last the Polish budget. Promptly anti-Semite influence, ever rampant in Poland, forced the resignation of Premier Count Skzrynski's coalition Cabinet.

With the national applecart thus upset, each of Poland's three political tycoons (Dmowski, Right; Witos, Center; Pilsudski, Left) encouraged his followers to set him up as dictator. Correspondents cabled that "anything might happen." Interest centred in fire-eating, swashbuckling Josef Pilsudski, a former (the second) President of the Rzeczpospolita Palska. He was exiled to Siberia (1887-1892) for plotting to assassinate the Tsar; and during the World War the Germans succeeded in catching and imprisoning him. When at liberty, he delights to organize bands of "patriots," train them in gymnastic sokols (clubs) and lead them on ill-considered expeditions, such as that which seized the strategically negligible town of Kielce (August, 1914). Poles love him since he fires imaginations.

Amid all this excitement, the new $300,000 Rockefeller Foundation Hygiene Institute was opened, dedicated, at Warsaw.