Pilsudski, Ho!

Poland provides a sort of answer to the nervous Italian question, "After Mussolini, what?" Polish Dictator Josef Pilsudski has been dead since May. but the Polish Dictatorship last week remained serenely alive and firm. Called to vote acceptance or rejection of a Parliamentary slate selected by the Warsaw Government, Poles have just voted acceptance, though 60% of the high-spirited Polish electorate remained away from the polls and three Poles were killed in election shindies. Last week President Ignatz Moscicki, who was to Marshal Pilsudski about what Italy's King is to her Dictator, hailed a stirring and significant ceremony.

Fascist workmen in Trieste lately built for Poland a crack 15,000-ton liner as fine for her size as Benito Mussolini's 54,000-ton Rex. Named the Pilsudski, this spruce motor ship was delivered by her Italian builders last week at Gdynia, was paid for with 600,000 tons of Polish coal which Dictator Mussolini is now burning in the engines of Italy's State Railway. As the Pilsudski steamed in, by far the largest liner ever to fly Poland's flag, proud Poles who had arrived by excursion trains from all over the new Republic cheered themselves hoarse, felt that surge of national elation Germans got from the Bremen, Frenchmen from the Normandie.

With bands blaring, salutes thundering from the minuscule Polish Navy, and a regiment of Poland's oversized, thoroughly potent Army stiff at attention, up the Pilsudski's mast climbed the flag of Poland. With her Diesel engines smoothly turning, the Dictator's namesake sailed forth on her maiden voyage to Manhattan, will provide U.S. citizens for the first time with a 100% modern liner on which they and their motor cars can sail direct to Poland in 87 days with Tourist as the top class ($168.50, exclusive of automobile).

Appropriately, when onetime Socialist Polish Deputy Stanislaus Dubois led an anti-Fascist mob against the Italian Embassy in Warsaw last week shouting "Hurrah for Socialism! Hurrah for Ethiopia!" he and his friends were promptly arrested, permitted to cool off for a few hours in jail. Likewise last week Poles glorifying in the Pilsudski everywhere sang Jeszcze Polska Nie Zginela, their national anthem: Poland's not yet dead in slav'ry, She shall reign in splendor! What she lost her children's brav'ry Once again shall render! On, on, ye Legions, where battle rages! Poland shall again be free. . . .

Never will Poles forget that their walrus-mustached, profane and eccentric Josef Pilsudski, who was also greathearted, valiant and dearly beloved, turned back the Soviet Armies from Warsaw with his Legions when all seemed lost and set Poland free, then made her Fascist and Europe's first bulwark against Communism.

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