I have declined in all consciousness to participate in this victory although I have been invited to share it. I preferred to put forward my own independent list, although I knew that it would be defeated. But I could not bring myself to associate myself with the very thing which all my life I have fought against. But you claim that the new Government, that your Bloc, is being guided by the most beautiful ideals of social justice and freedom. May be. I do not know. But all you say and declaim has no significance whatever either for me or for the nation, as long as you do not allow free discussion and freedom of speech. After all, even the Germans and Skiwski 1 used to speak in fine terms, only we were never allowed to answer them back. Your arguments are also always " unanswerable" for the very simple reason that it is forbidden to answer them. It is like a conversation with a gramophone or a wireless set. Mr. Attlee was right when he said recently: "We in Great Britain have always considered public discussion as the basis of democracy and the guarantee of ju~tice." This principle, however, should be applied not in Britain alone, but in the whole world. The fairness of a case must not be decided by physical force, by use of a revolver or a whip, but by the verdict of the majority, arrived at in a free exchange of arguments. First the July Manifesto, 2 then the programme of the P.P.S. 8 and the P.P.R.' and, finally, the Bloc, in its last electoral appeal, guaranteed the freedom of speech. But in spite of that, both thought and word have been muzzled as never before in Poland. One can say only that of which the Government approves ; the Government is always right, although it has neither monopoly nor copyright of truth. 1 Emil Skiwski-a Polish journalist who collaborated with the Germans. 2 Manifesto issued by the Lublin Committee on its formation, 1944. a P.P.S.-Polish Socialist Party, founded in 1892,whose name was appropriated by a new Party, founded in Lublin in 1944 by M. Osubka-Morawski and his associates. ' The Communist Party of Poland (K.P.P.) was dissolved by the Comintern in 1937. It was replaced by the Polish Workers' Party (P.P.R.) at the end of 1941. 51 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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