, . Now the Polish National Goun- el, which has grown up inside the country, leading the Struggle : these past four years, could have claimed legitimacy by reason of its resistance to the enemy. It could have said we have done the fighting: we stand for a pro- gressive Poland; we deserve to govern. ‘ Fr AROBIN a ral Zigmund Berling “@. The indispurably “Gere the Polish people benefit of leadership ae ‘to © govern Poland 2 | st, But the sensational fact is that the National Council has decided to adhere to the original constitu- tion, the one for which Peasant and Socialist leaders often suf- fered jail in the past, the one over which there was 4 15-year wrangle inside of Poland splittine ‘the nation into two opposite camps. ' By this decision, the National Council has finally debunked all Giese “the charges against it from the anally ~ succeeded; “in _ government-inzexile. Tt> is not a 1—but only by the ‘most _ going to set up an illegal regime. tH ville cal, terroristic © Tt is foing 8 jlering and sheer cir- “very laws with which Poland $2 of Poland’s laws. ~ “started out so hopefully 25 years yernment-in-exile goy- 289-— aby virtue of the 1985 ._, m, iwhich gives ‘the. -: all powers and makes A® for the precise differences ‘and the government - “between the two constitutions, fhan~ bis puppet. Tt is whereas the democratic March “constitution and that 1921 document fave the vote to » real’power rests inre- all citizens 21 years of age, the landsin the hands of April, 1935, document raised the ent Wiadislaw Raezkie. legal voting age to 24, thus de_ ee osetia re oe briving hundreds of thousands of Polish reactionaries al- pd that constitution, be- |\mited the powers of the ~ #@ made him something of Bad on the Freneh model. ~ wanted a strone exe- (ited the participation of — E:ratic political parties fe, and so they sought to modify the March, nt e ovement Issues Appeal ment in Britain repeats its insistent desire to be ~allowed to ‘help here in the same way as it is pos- “sible for the Free’ German Committee on the Hast- “ern front. “We Wish £0 help in organizing at the front and by radio, an uprising inside Germany.” : Pi A similar appeal was beamed to Germany from ' Britain last week by the Joint Council of Free - Internationals, representing “millions of organized “workers” in the International Mine Workers, Metal Workers and Transport Workers Unions. The ap- “peal, directed to foreign workers in Germany, called ‘upon them to aid in Hitler’s overthrow. ““The moment for which you have waited so long has come,’ the statement declared, urging the workers to publicize the recent challenge to Hitler’s power. > ioe to abide by those ie of Poland mature young people of their ballot rights. Secondly, the principle of pro- portional representation both for political parties and for differ ent nationalities was changed. In a country where the different political parties and groups repre- Senting minorities played a big role, elimination of such provi- sions strengthened the hands of the reactionary camp. Thirdly, the president was given the power to appoint no less than one-third of the sena- tors to the upper house of the Polish parliament; thus, popular rights to elect senators were abolished. And under a subsequent elec- toral law of July 8, 1935, the men in control decided that the Polish people could vote only for the government bloe, wholly reaction- ary, or not at all. In other words, through this 1935 Constitution, the Polish peo- ple could either ratify the govern- ment bloc or take no part in the elections. They chose the latter. In the 1935 elections almost 70 percent of the lectorate simply. Stayed away from the polls, and the two chambers chosen at that time represented 4 minority of the people. -The final joker was the action of the former president, Tgenacy Moscicki, in 1938, dissolving both chambers because they did not represent the people! Having de- prived the. people of their voting rights, the president then dis. solved the parliament on the grounds that it was unrepre- sentative! ‘ : Such was the pre-war Poland’s experience with ‘the 1935 Gonsti_ tution. And yet it is this Con- stitution from which: the present government-in-exile’ derives its claim to legality. ne. It is therefore of deep signific- ance and in' harmony with all democratic opinion that the Polish National Council, the wunder- ground fighting center, has re- affirmed support for the March, 1921, Constitution. It means a return to legality in Poland. It means that the United Nations, apart from all other rea= sons, must finally acknowledge the illegalelity of the exiled gov- ernment, and act accordingly. S at a secret communications post are shown in this picture (left) a batricade formed by an overturned truck on a Copenhagen street + -- al SHORT JABS by OF Bill An Obscene Gestu re pee most obscene gesture yet to be made in the war is Franco’s offer to act as a peacemaker. This is the man who earned the title of “Butcher” by a mass Slaughter as terrible as that carried out by his Finnish counterpart, Mannerheim; the same man whose every action has shown that he has nothing to learn from Himmier, i Hitler, Mussolini or the Japanese warlords—the bullrine at Badajos, the destruction of Guernica and thousand other incidents of the war against .the constitutionally elected Spanish government bears elo quent witness to the truth of that. . Franco’s offer couched in the language of bastard neutrality— “Spain is disposed to collaborate and offer the fruits of her experience to other nations”—is not only a cynical gesture, it is the product of fear and duty: fear of the inevitable vengeance of the Spanish : people, duty to his fascist backers, whe put him in power by de- : stroying every democratic element in Spanish life and to those hierarchs of the Catholic church who blessed his monstrosities. No overtures towards bringing the war to an end by negotiation were made by these people when democratic France was being crushed, when Britain was being “blitzed” by Hitler’s air armadas or when the Soviet Union was being, as they thought, destroyed. When things were going their way, they expressed no desire for peace. Now, when all the indications are that fascism is doomed, they hasten to salvage as much of it as they can. _ To think of Franco as acting as a peace hegotiator would be Similar to thinking of having a robber’s accomplice act as a peace- maker between a robber and his victim. : This war will only be brought to a Successful finish by using the Same arguments that the being used’ against the Germans and the Japanese today—battleships, planes, tanks, guns, bayonets, commando miyes and more and more of them; and not in Escurials or Vaticans either, but on all the warfronts, particularly in the heart of Germany ~ and Japan: And as for Franco, with all the other war to defend him. he should be e si placed against a wall and shot - criminals, no matter who in high Places try : Thirty Miles a Day like old wine. The sky was a replica of the blue Mediterranean lift, : : in the Said one standee, loud enough so that no one h dropper, “Lovely this morning, ain’t it? way.” “Yep,” answered his friend in a wh “particularly the Red Army.” ad to be an eaves _ Everything’s coming our isper of the same volumne, A Definition of Burocracy TRERE is much talk these days about burocracy. against situations which look crazy, to say the least, to the man who takes common Sense for his guide. They wonder why. This is Particularly the case in the administration of public bodies. People come up It is almost impossible to imagine a demo from the evils of burocracy, although when ¢ industry are well oiled, it is at times hardly with the multiplicity of boards and administrati needs of war, it becomes widespread. Individ take upon themselves functions not provided in and. lesser pen-pushing luminaries follow hide-b make them seem like fools. Sometimes the fruits of burocracy are laughable in Spite of ap- parent tragedy, for the man-animal has that gift of the gods, the ability to laugh at his own misfortunes. : i . One eugbable creampie of burocracy which e 4 than words, S just been raised in the House of Comm & Neill, the member for Comox-A Iberni, fp by Aa We (and a lot of us believe : ; present Labor candidate) . ' Hee | A veteran of the gotten by the pensions succeeded in obtaining accompanying the first ary and humanitarian gem. _ “We know that you are very ill and if you are dead ae i receive this cheque, it must be returned.” y whensyou eu Tf you didn’t know what burocracy is, this is one slant On it.