Subdued Optimism

The door of No. 10 Downing Street swung open for Polish Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. Around a large table in the Cabinet Room he sat with Prime Minister Winston Churchil, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, others. For an hour he talked of his Washington visit, his five cordial meetings with President Roosevelt. The conference ended in an air of optimism, subdued but real. The men at this meeting really believed that the Polish-Russian feud might soon be ended.

Back from Washington, Mikolajczyk brought President Roosevelt's assurance that he would take the matter up (but do little more) with his friend, Marshal Stalin. A more solid base for optimism was the way Roosevelt's reception had strengthened Mikolajczyk's hand for disposal of the Russian-hating, Russian-hated faction in the Polish Government in Exile headed by General Kazimierz Sosnkowski.

Poles indulging in these hopes, so often thwarted before, remembered that July 4 is the first anniversary of the death (in a plane crash) of their Premier-General Wladyslaw Sikorski, practitioner of peace with Moscow. Perhaps Stanislaw Mikolajczyk might yet be another Sikorski.

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