be given to their votes than to those of the reactionary peasants. We cannot afford the luxury of slow and easy evolution, and we cannot give the peasants control of the government even if they are in a majority. Hence the PPR-PPS Bloc must win by any methods that may be necessary. It is certainly true that because the PSL was the only legal opposition, it was supported for tactical reasons by many reactionaries, including Fascists, of whom Poland has more than her share, though Mikolajczyk repudiates them. The ultra-reaction- ; aries had no other way of expressing their hatred of Russia. I was reminded of the support given Republican and Democratic candidates by the Communists in the U.S.A., whether they I wanted that support or not. But of the 700,000 dues-paying members of the PSL only a minority are tinged with Fascism or anti-Semitism, and no Fascists or anti-Semites have any ( influence within the party. It is also true that many peasants, fleeing to the forests in dread of murder by the secret police, ; join the bands of desperate Poles who wage guerrilla warfare against the Government and the alien society it seeks to impose upon them. Many, possibly most, of these men are bandits in the criminal sense, without much political ideology. The real bandits among them are the fruit of five years of' war and of the Nazi-Communist occupations. Even Jacob Berman, Undersecretary of State and the power behind the throne, discriminates between the two tendencies in the underground, which, he stated, killed more than 15,000 Government adherents (mostly Security Policemen) since the war's end. But Mikolajczyk repudiates vehemently any connection between the PSL and the underground-or with foreign imperialism. He has urged those of his followers who have fled in fear -to the protection of the forest bands to return to normal life and abandon their futile civil war, which gives the regime a pretext for political murders. Typical Communist double-talk is exemplified by the postelection manifesto promising an amnesty to opponents who repent and guarantees in the new constitution of civil liberties. In this same manifesto the PSL is declared to be " outside sound social forces and has eliminated itself from the democratic 12 BibliotecaGino Bianco
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