Crimea conference

Captain Alan Graham (Wirral) 
All the enemies of Nazi Germany must rejoice at the declaration made by the three Heads of Governments at the Conference at Yalta of their inflexible determination to destroy German militarism and Nazism, and to ensure that Germany will never again destroy the peace of Europe. Continued co-operation between the Great Powers, amongst whom we must, inevitably, include France, and continued resolution on the part of peoples concerned, even if it has to be spread over many years, and at the cost of many sacrifices, are the two essential conditions to such a happy consummation. Once, however, this is achieved the blood, tears, toil and sweat will have been worth while. Our basic purposes for which we went to war, namely to secure our national and imperial security and, no less important and in direct contrast to the Nazi creed, to maintain our belief that the State exists for the individual, will have been triumphantly vindicated.
It is essential, because of this belief, that Nazism must be extirpated if our civilisation is to continue. The system of government where the rights and development of the individual are sacred, cannot exist peacefully side by side with another system of government, where the individual simply does not count. For the one system to live, the other must die. Therefore it was, I presume, with an equally deep conviction on the part of the three Heads of State at Yalta of the vital necessity of the rights of the individual that, in their pronouncement on the Polish question, they insisted on free and unfettered elections being held in Poland as soon as possible and based on universal suffrage and a secret ballot. Of course it would not be possible to consider Poland truly liberated unless the Poles could claim and practise such an elementary form of democracy.
This announcement was happily reinforced by the references in paragraph 5 to Principle 3 of the Atlantic Charter, 1333affirming the right of all peoples to choose the form of government ender which they would live. If the three Heads of Government are sincere in attaching importance to this principle, 'how comes it that in discussing the future of Poland no representative of the London Polish Government was called into council? Two out of the three participating Governments have recognised its legality, and that Government has made its views quite plain in the Memorandum which it sent to the British and American Governments on 22nd June. The present legal Government of Poland was consulted neither before nor after the Conference. Nor was it even mentioned in the announcements of the decisions of the Conference. Yet, this is the sole legal constitutional and recognised Government of our Ally Poland. This is the Government to which the Polish Armed Forces, now numbering nearly 200,000, and the Polish Home Forces of the Underground Army have sworn loyalty and allegiance, as the rightful office-bearers of their nation and State. Their Prime Minister, Mr. Arciszewski, a veteran Socialist, and so representative of the Polish people that he was the head in Poland, until last autumn, of the whole of the underground movement, has simply been ignored. He has not even been received by our Prime Minister, who legally recognised the truly representative quality of this Polish Government.
On Thursday last I was visited in this House by the representatives of half a million Polish workers and underground fighters from France, mostly Socialists and miners, thoroughly good democrats. They were unanimously supporters of Mr. Arciszewski and his Government, both in opposition to the unconditional surrender of the Eastern half of Poland, and to the surrender of the independent Government of Poland, into the hands of the Lublin puppets. I have here a cable from a body representing the 90,000 Poles in Argentina, which I propose to read: The Crimea Conference has carried out once more the partition of Poland without the Polish people's consent or knowledge and has put in foreign hands the true attribute of a nation's sovereignty to create a Government. This, after six grim years of war against Germany is an incredibly hard blow. A tragedy for all of us. To form this new Government Mr. Molotov assisted by two Ambassadors has been appointed. Commissar Molotov is the one who, in 1939, signed with Ribbentrop the agreement to wipe off the Polish State, who can be held responsible for 1334the deportation of one million and a half of Poles, who took away Polish citizenship from all Poles in the Soviet Union. In spite of this, in the Big Three's opinion the Polish people should trust Molotov more than President Raczkiewicz or one of the venerable Polish Archbishops, as arranged in Greece. We Poles are seeking for a manly conscience that would protest against such revolting facts. Shall we find it? On 15th December practically every speaker in the House affirmed the utterly unrepresentative quality of the Lublin Committee, yet it seems that the opinion of this House has been flouted by the decisions of the Yalta Conference. The Lublin Committee is referred to in the pronouncement of the Conference as the "Provisional Government now functioning in Poland" and this body, vaguely expanded, is to be the new Provisional Government of Poland charged with the holding of free and unfettered elections in that country. We know the importance which the three Heads of Government assembled at Yalta so rightly attached to these free and unfettered elections, but what sort of chance have they? The so-called Provisional Polish Government at this moment is so controlling the country that no independent opinion, however democratic, is allowed to be published at all, all wireless receivers have been confiscated and broadcasts can only be heard at certain places controlled by the Provisional Government. The Lublin Minister of Education, M. Skizesencki, has informed the professors of Cracow University that the Rector of the University and the Deans of the Faculties will not be elected as formerly but appointed by the Government. Professors, writers, artists and scientists are forced to sign declarations denouncing the Polish Government in London as traitors to the Polish cause and especially attacking the President, M. Raczkiewicz, M. Arciszewski, and even our Prime Minister's favourite, M. Mikolajczyk. If they refuse to do this they are arrested and imprisoned or else just murdered.
At this moment members of the former Home or Underground Army, particularly officers, are being arrested, deported, and even shot. The private soldiers of the Underground Army are mostly being rounded up, and forcibly enlisted under the command of General Zymierski, the Lublin Commander-in-Chief. He, incidentally, served five years' imprisonment in pre-war Poland for having, when in the Quarter-Master- 1335General's Department, embezzled money allotted to the purchase of gas-masks for the Army. I presume that the Big Three do not expect General Anders, and the honourable officers of the Polish Army still fighting by our side, to accept the leadership of such a Commander-in-Chief! Finally, since 1939, more than 2,000,000 Poles have been forcibly deported to Russia and Siberia. Such are the auspices under which these three unhappy gentlemen, Messrs. Molotov, Harriman and Sir Archibald Clerk-Kerr, are expected to supervise the reorganisation of the present Provisional Government, and enable free and unfettered elections to take place. What optimism, what heroic faith in the democratic behaviour of the actual rulers of present-day Poland, the Russian secret police!
I will now pass to two questions—which I wish to put, in regard to the Yalta decision on the Curzon Line, although in the eyes of all Poles, frontier questions, important as they are, come second in importance to national independence.