"Paderewski for President"

Poland, by far the biggest and most potent state hewn out of the War, grew agitated last week over her Presidential election next June. Urgent is the necessity of picking a President possessing world prestige--for who knows how much longer the Fascists, Militarists and Junkers now riding high in Germany will let the Polish Corridor alone? To a British journalist Chancellor Hitler exclaimed: "The Polish Corridor must be returned to us!"

Smart Poles realize that non-Poles, broadly speaking, have never heard the name of that worthy, honest, unassuming man, President Ignatz Moscicki of Poland. On the other hand the world has heard too much about the eccentricities (slanderously said "to amount to madness") of the great Polish soldier-statesman whom only Poles are temperamentally equipped to obey and understand. Marshal Josef Pilsudski. A dictator with a small "d," he refuses to be President, detests the Premiership, publicly calls the Polish Parliament a prostitute when he can think of no fouler epithet and rules Poland through a Cabinet clique called "the Pilsudski Colonels."

In these circumstances, might not Poland elect as President next June her world-great Ignace Jan Paderewski? Last week several Warsaw, Krakow and other Polish newsorgans started a "Paderewski for President!" boom, stressed that no other candidate has yet taken the field.

"Paderewski is the only man," declared Krakow's Glos Narodu, "who has the sympathy of the entire nation."

Two old men are Pianist Paderewski, 72. and dictator Pilsudski, 65, but are they old enough to tolerate each other? That was Poland's crucial question last week. It was the Army which favored M. Paderewski to quit Poland's Premiership in 1919 after a tenure of only ten months, and Marshal Pilsudski is the Army's idol.

Because a 72-year-old pianist must soon retire, because it is pleasant to retire as the President of one's country, and because both Paderewski and Pilsudski are towering patriots, the pianist's candidacy looms. When U. S. newshawks pounced on M. Paderewski at Providence, R. I. last week he pursed his pale lips. "There is much discussion of the Presidency in Poland just now," said the Great Pole's secretary, "but Mr. Paderewski is not in direct touch with it. He has not been formally offered a nomination and naturally cannot discuss the subject."

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