The world's economy is sorely stricken. Hunger and more moderate need prevails in lands where neither had been known for many years. Nevertheless, the peoples of the world are more conscious of their interdependence, and where the old League of Nations failed, hope again springs eternal as the United Nations Organisation ffa:kers into a fitful flame ofliberty, and seeks to organize the world's primary ~~- 1 Over all, however, there persists the clash of ideologies; pnd Poland is a centre of the conflict. The political struggle in \the States where Communist influence is powerful concerns fundame1tals as far as Democracy is affected. The " Four Freedoms " and the Atlantic Charter to which the Soviet signature is attached are rot phantom spirits, insubstantial, evanescent. Freedom to write to speak, to reverence, to organise and act politically, are all essen ·als to a Democratic State. The Report which follows demonstrates clearly how far remJ,ed is present-day Poland from the exercise of the "Four Freedofns." Was it to inherit perpetual Soviet ownership and influence that1 the defenders of Warsaw fell? Or was it in the confident belief that the Polish people should again be free to work out their own salltion in full accord with the principles of the Charter that the azis were so gallantly defied ? The betrayal of Russia by the Nazi hierarchy with who her statesmen had compounded, is not likely to be forgotten eit er by those of the Soviet State who survived the epic struggle froni Leningrad along all the Russian border, or by the nations who, amid their own life struggles, watched it all and wondered; who mourned with Soviet sorrow over the good blood spilt and rejoiced at Soviet success when the triumph came. Now Russia binds up her wounds, as do we all, and seeks to rebuild the ruins and restore her great economy. Like the rest of the nations, the Russian people must be contemplating the coming of the Atomic Age and the uselessness of land frontiers in possible future wars. Like the rest of us, too, they must ponder whether existing ideologies--either bond or free-will serve to stay the devastation of the coming powers that science is secretly preparing or survive the widespread wildernesses they are being devised to create. There is little hope for humanity unless the game of War is renounced for good and all and honest human politics are given frea play for the progress of mankind. Socialists who remembered the Russia of the Czars wete elated with their final overthrow in 1917.' Thirty years after Socialists hail the Russian advance in economic and social life. We await political development consonant with that advance. We ask that in her 2 B1bliotecaGino Bianco
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