Word: polishing
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Against a background of centuries of retrogressive feudal rule the present Polish government last month made its first attempt at a free election. When the results were in, the government forces, a coalition of communists and socialists, had an almost seven-to-one majority over the opposition Polish Peasant Party. The election was not, as Americans understand the term, a free election. Not even the staunchest government supporters claim that it was. Estimates as to the degree of freedom that was allowed and evaluation of the result had complete freedom been permitted are at best a matter of highly conflicting...
...traditionally choleric and vehemently nationalistic nation the twin tempests of war and social upheaval have left a hot and churning sea of Polish emotions. The present government in carrying out long needed land reforms, in outlawing the classically Prussian type military elique, and in actively combatting anti-Semitism, an evil deeply rooted in the Polish scene, has created a wealthy, influential, and fanatical opposition. The purpose of this opposition is not the reconstruction of Poland but the reestablishment of the landed and military nobility that for so long dominated that country. Their armed underground has, it is said...
...Poland, but democracy is a delicate plant and cannot be expected to thrive in the barren soil that is Poland today. If democracy is to be brought into Poland it must be cultivated step by step. The most obvious move in that direction is material aid in the Polish reconstruction and in the stabilization of the Polish atmosphere to one more healthy for democracy. To saddle the present government with criticism of an election which they were forced to hold prematurely will merely weaken those forces which seem to be making considerable progress toward the conditions under which democracy...
Cavendish-Bentinck did not let the charges against his friends or himself prevent him from discharging his obligation of observing last month's Polish election; he made no secret of his belief (shared by U.S. Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane) that the election was neither free nor unfettered, as Britain, the U.S. and Russia had guaranteed at Yalta. Apparently, he felt that it would be a personal and a national disgrace to duck a responsibility his country had assumed...
...Berlin, police arrested more than 200 coal thieves in one week, while citizens queued up for their meager fuel rations (see cut). In one instance, the cold brought a negative kind of relief: it halted (temporarily) the expulsion of Germans from Polish-held regions in the east. Perhaps the best example of what the cold wave meant to Europe's plain people was furnished by a refugee from that area, whose case was reported by TIME Correspondent Percy Knauth...