Elitarism

Last week the "Walrus of Warsaw,' shrewd and sturdy old Marshal Josef Pilsudski, became the first of Europe's crop of post-War dictators to confer full and sweeping powers on his puppet.

For a decade and more beloved Marshal Pilsudski has refused to be President, skulking happily in his War Ministry, refusing to confer with politicians, making occasional picturesque and unprintable speeches to the delighted rabble, ruling Poland as he pleases with the excuse, "Parliament is unfit to rule. Parliament is a prostitute!"

Pilsudski's puppet President throughout has been that great Polish scientist, Professor Ignatz Moscicki. When the old "Walrus" was wheezing with asthma last year, the President invented a device for pepping up the air breathed by the Dictator in his suburban Belvidere Palace. Last week the grim old Marshal threw a cordon of his fanatically loyal troops around the President's palace, shooed into it the Cabinet, Diet and Senate and provided Professor Moscicki with pen & ink. Scratch, scratch the puppet President signed a new Constitution (TIME, Dec. 25, 1933) which sweeps into the dustbin every vestige of Polish democratic institutions and regularizes in legal form the governing of Poland by what the new Constitution calls her "Elite"--actually her Army officers and ex-soldiers. Since the old Marshal feels they will always do as he orders, he had no hesitancy last week in conferring on the President legal powers to control the new "Elitarist Government." If it works to his satisfaction, the "Walrus of Warsaw" is expected in 1940 to consent to be elected President.

"Elitarism" is the contribution to political science of Colonel Walery Slawek, spur-clinking Premier and close crony of the Marshal. Last week Colonel Slawek was hailed as "Father of the Polish Constitution." As a bow to Democracy it retains Poland's democratically elected Chamber but strips it of power by giving the President an absolute veto. The Senate is replaced by "The Assembly of Elders," one-third appointed by the President, the other two-thirds by Poland's new official Elite, namely males who have won either of two war decorations, the Virtuti Militari Order or the Independence Cross. The President can dissolve both the Chamber and the Council of Elders and he can on his own responsibility command the armed forces of the State.

This setup tactful Poles called a democracy, a dictatorship and a republic in one. In Toledo last week suave Dr. Henryk Gruber, who will soon return to his Warsaw job as President of the Postal Savings Bank of Poland, hailed "our new Constitution--one of the most democratic constitutions in Europe! It introduces a New Deal in Poland."

For sheer distortion of plain words out of their plain meaning this could scarcely be surpassed, and no such feat was attempted in Warsaw by Colonel Slawek. What he has done is to make a tolerably neat system out of the loose ends of Marshal Pilsudski's erratic and unsystematic but popular and effective Military Dictatorship.

Poles, feeling themselves caught between the mighty and swift-growing military powers of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, accept this Dictatorship not as something hateful and imposed but as the very shield of self-preservation and self-defense.

Said Colonel Slawek: "There will be nothing elderly about the Assembly of Elders. Many will be drawn from the fine, highly trained ranks of Poland's younger officers. They will be Elders in the sense of being superior persons, a true Polish Elite."

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