Word: pilsudski
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...chief enemies (TIME, May 10, GERMANY). 2) That Poland's budget refuses to balance, this having led to the fall of the Skzrynski Cabinet (TlME, May 3). 3) That early last week the Nationalist leader Witos formed a new Cabinet and welcomed into it, as Minister of War, Pilsudski's avowed enemy, the Marquis of Malczewskis. 4) That this Nationalist Cabinet would begin the old game of oppressing the Jews and racial minorities, whereas Pilsudski and the Socialists desired to weld the country into a compact unit...
Only that morning Pilsudski had flayed the Witos Government in an interview printed by the Warsaw press. Grimly he reflected that he was still the idol of the Polish army, that most Polish soldiers subscribe to the famed remark of a nameless private: "Our Pilsudski has only to wink his eye and we will all commit anything from treason to suicide, according to his orders...
Explosion. While the Marshal brooded, a band of Nationalists, infuriated by his press tirade against the Nationalist Witos Cabinet, rushed without warning upon his house, surrounded it, called to Pilsudski to come out and be thrashed. Thick-witted, they had not cut his telephone wire. With a lion's leap the Marshal seized the instrument, shouted the number of the nearest army barracks, bellowed a command to the astonished officer who answered. True Poles, every soldier in the barracks seized his gun, rushed frenziedly to the rescue of the man who symbolizes Polish freedom - whatever his extragavances of temperament...
...Marshal's rescuers sped to succor him, he, adroit, parleyed with the Nationalist mob. The soldiers came. Pilsudski saw and conquered. While the Nationalists fled, the soldiers stayed to cheer, to work themselves into a frenzy in which they demanded that Pilsudski lead them to Warsaw, overturn the Cabinet, free Poland of scalawags...
Events poured like a torrent from that decision.* Within a few hours the Marshal's throaty telephone commands brought regiment after regiment at the double. As Pilsudski, eyes aflame, tugging at his drooping mustache, neared Warsaw, President Wojciechowski, personally commanding a troop of soldiers still loyal to the Government, barred his way at the entrance to a long bridge. Imperious Pilsudski demanded the resignation of the Witos Cabinet, the formation of a Cabinet largely Socialist. Since the President's troops were outnumbered, he could offer no more defiance than to refuse the demand, hastily retreat to the Belnedere...