NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE news of the arrest of the Polish political leaders by the Russians has fallen like a bomb among the Allies assembled at San Francisco to plan world security. Nothing that the Germans could have devised to drive a wedge between Russia and the Western Powers could have been so effective as this amazing disregard of the sanctity of envoys and the understanding between the Allies ; and the fact cannot be disguised that a very dark cloud has fallen over all the proceedings at San Francisco. It was in accordance with the agreement at Yalta that the Three-Power Commission was set up at Moscow with a view to reorganising the provisional Polish Government on a broader democratic basis " with the inclu- sion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad." It was ostensibly to discuss this matter that the sixteen Polish leaders (some of them nominees of the British Government) were invited to meet Soviet military authorities in Poland. They were not taken to Moscow to be introduced to the Commission, but on the contrary " disappeared," and repeated questions as to their whereabouts from the British and the Americans met with no answer until, after weeks had elapsed, it was coolly announced that they had been arrested by the Soviet authorities on a charge of preparing diversionary acts in the rear of the Red Army." If indeed these leaders, who in good faith visited the Russians to discuss Polish politics, were chargeable, as Mr. Molotov says, with sabotage and wrecking, it seems inconceivable that the whole facts should not have been placed at once before the British and Ainerican Ambassadors. Mr. Eden and Mr. Stettinius took the only possible course when they broke off the discussions with Mr. Molotov about the Polish Government and pressed for further information. What adds so greatly to the seriousness of the situation is that, at the very moment when the United Nations are building a security system based on the co-operation of the great Powers, the Soviet Government should abandon the co-operation agreed upon in the particular case of Poland, and should take action of a most disturbing kind behind the backs of Britain and America. Everyone is com- pelled to ask—Is this the basis on which we are invited to build world security?
