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Polish Official’s Speech Reveals Government Party’s New Policy

April 27, 1938
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Great significance was attached in political circles today to the speech by Vice-Premier Eugen Kwiatkowski at Katowice, which is regarded by Polish newspapers as the first official expression of the new policy of the Camp of National Unity, Government party.

The camp’s new policy was signalized recently by a number of significant events. Most important of these was formation of an advisory Government council consisting, in the majority, of left-wingers in the camp. Secondly was the expulsion from the party of the anti-Semitic radical Nationalist Deputy Dudzinski, for violently attacking, in his weekly organ, the Government’s policy on Jews. Finally came expulsion of the former leader of camp’s youth organization, Rutkowski, together with his group of followers belonging to the right radical wing of the party.

The camp’s new policy is considered the result of failure to achieve the goal of national consolidation with the rightist parties and an attempt to reach an understanding with the left.

Kwiatkowski, a personal friend of President Ignace Moscicki, is often referred to in Polish newspapers as the future premier of Poland. Emphasizing in his Katowice speech Sunday night the inviolability of the Constitution and equality of rights, he appealed for national consolidation “without using the mask and the whip of totalitarianism.” He expressed faith in democratic self-governing institutions, which is regarded as indication of the Government’s intention to introduce a more democratic system of elections.

Referring to the Jewish question, the Vice-Premier reiterated the camp’s original policy that it was imperative to “Polonize” towns, commerce and industry and declared that the first to emigrate from Poland should be the people who had “pushed themselves into the country” in the past several decades and had remained an “alien, often hostile body.”

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