POLAND: Warsaw to Angers

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Out of Paris chuffed last week a special train crammed with statesmen and ambassadors. Speeding through the "Chateau Country" it rolled down the beauteous Valley of the Loire on an extra-special mission. Aboard were nearly all members of the new expatriate "Government of Poland" recently set up at Paris (TIME, Oct. 9).

Just out of hospital, after a severe attack of pleurisy, was President Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, who sat pale and hollow-eyed watching the telegraph poles flash past. A political neutral, onetime President of the Senate in Warsaw, the ailing President leaves nearly everything to his active Premier, suave, resourceful General Wladyslaw Sikorski who chatted busily in the train last week with members of his cabinet, many of whom a few short weeks ago were fleeing impoverished across Poland to escape as best they could.

"What a marvelous thing it is to be able to roll along in this train in perfect peace!" said one of the Premier's aides. "The last time I was on a train back in Poland enemy aircraft dived every 20 minutes and machine-gunned the train."

The Polish special finally stopped 188 miles from Paris in Angers, sedate and historic capital of the old duchy of Anjou. This province was the patrimony of Henry III of Valois who in 1573 was elected King of Poland. Appropriately Angers, with its "Chateau of the King of Poland" and along the Maine its "Wharves of the King of Poland," was chosen by the French Cabinet to serve as the expatriate "Capital of Poland."

As the train drew in a brass band blared French and Polish airs and the city was thick with crossed French, Polish and British flags. In every shop window were placards reading ALL HONOR TO HEROIC AND MARTYRED POLAND. Citizens of Angers cordially cried "Vive Sikorski" although remarking privately that perhaps the presence of their Polish guests may make Angers a target for German bombs.

"Like Frontier Guards." Berlin papers have for some time called the Polish Government "a farce." Last week the Moscow press picked up a New York Herald Tribune story saying that at Angers "one of the smallest States in the world—probably smaller than any except the State of Vatican City—is being established on an estate one mile long and half a mile wide in the Valley of the Loire." At this Pravda of Moscow jibed: "Two things particularly worry Sikorski: first the absence of a capital city; secondly, the absence of a national minority to oppress. Sikorski is hesitating whether to import the latter or ask local French authorities for the loan of a few peasants to ill treat."

After the "new State" had made worldwide headlines, tactful Angers authorities unobtrusively explained that it had no dimensions, that their soil remains 100% French but that troops of the Polish Army, which General Sikorski is industriously recruiting in France and Britain among expatriate Poles, will be permitted to mount armed guard over the buildings leased to the Poles in Angers, and "it is expected they will feel and act like frontier guards."