POLAND: Refugees

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After a 600-mile ride by truck from Warsaw to the southeasternmost corner of what was Poland and after surviving a German bombing raid there; after traveling by specially chartered Rumanian train to the Black Sea port of Constantsa, and after evading a German order for internment there; after aimlessly riding the eastern Mediterranean in a Turkish boat for a week; after a brief stop in Syria; after traveling to France on a French naval vessel—after these weary wanderings a symbol arrived in Paris last week. It was solid and rare—gold in bars to the value of $80,000,000. But its real value was as a symbol of the solvency of the Polish Government, whose reconstituted Cabinet received the treasure in Paris. The Cabinet announced to the world that not an ounce of the gold would go for the Government's current expenses, but all of it would lie in reserve for restoration of a Polish currency after the restoration of a Polish country.

Not all Poland's prominent refugees were as fortunate as the gold: > Still waiting to be released from internment in Rumania was 72-year-old former President Ignacy Moscicki. He has applied for permission to go to Fribourg, Switzerland, where he was once a chemistry professor. The Rumanian Government would gladly have released the old President, but the German Government objected, and Rumania just now fears crossing Germany in any way.

>Seriously ill from long recurrent lung trouble last week at Brasov, Rumanian health resort, where he is interned with other former Polish Cabinet Ministers, was former Foreign Minister Colonel Josef Beck. Suffering from a heart attack in the same house was former Minister of Commerce Antoni Roman.

> Few high Polish officers escaped from Poland with much military honor left. Not only were men like Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz (now also in Rumania) criticized for their professional handling of the Polish Army, but they were roundly condemned for leaving their country while their Army was still fighting. Exception was General Casimir Sosnokowski, who led a last-ditch offensive action against the eastbound Germans near Lwów even while Soviet troops approached from the other direction. Last week General Sosnokowski arrived safely in Paris, and his aide, a Colonel Dehnel, told newsmen the story of the General's escape:

A patrol having confirmed the news that the Soviet forces were marching into Poland by sighting a Soviet tank through field glasses, General Sosnokowski ordered the remnants of his Army (3,000 men) to disperse hastily into small groups. Then the General, his aide and two sergeants threw away their uniforms, put on the oldest clothes they could find and started out to meet the advancing Soviet Army. The Soviet patrols merely looked upon them as humble peasants. Once they hopped a ride in a Soviet Army truck, but mostly they walked. After 13 days of sleeping by day in the woods and walking by night, they reached the Carpathian Mountains, slipped through Soviet border patrols and into Rumania.

Last week, General Sosnokowski had both honor and reward. The President-in-exile, Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, successor to President Moscicki, became seriously ill, named General Sosnokowski as his successor "in case the post should become vacant before the conclusion of peace."