Towards Victory

MR. C. R. SANDERSON: Gentlemen, The Empire Club of Canada today continues its series of talks by brilliant men of thought and action by having as its guest speaker Mr. Victor Podoski, Consul General of Poland. (Applause.) May we remind ourselves that he was born in the Ukraine; that he fought for two years in the Polish Cavalry; that subsequently he was Assistant Military Attache in London; and that, since then, he has held diplomatic posts in Russia at Moscow, in the United States at Washington, and today in Canada at Ottawa. (Applause.)

Gentlemen, it is my privilege to ask you to rise and drink a toast to Poland and her Consul General, Victor Podoski. (Toast to Poland and her Consul General, Victor Podoski.)

Upon rising to his feet, MR. PODOSKI was greeted with vigorous applause.

He addressed the meeting as follows:

Mr. President, my visible and invisible friends: It is a great privilege for me to address the members of The Empire Club. In the two years of my stay in Canada I have never had the privilege of addressing the members of your Club; but I have been in touch with the British Empire for a long time.

My first contact was in 1913 when I met the first members of your glorious Empire in a country which lies in the northern portion of the British Isles, a country for which every Pole has a warm spot in his heart. I refer to that superior race of the Scotch. (Applause.) I always find it safe to mention the Scotch; everybody likes them, and most people like their produce. Ever since Poland was invaded we have had demonstrations of generosity and hospitality on the part of the Scotch, contrary to the old jokes. So I find it fitting to pay my first tribute to that marvellous race, the Scotch, the builders of the Empire.

In the second place, I would like to pay my tribute to the Canadians. The Prime Minister of Canada, the members of your Government, and the citizens of Canada, men and women, have shown only understanding and encouragement and kindness to myself and the Polish people who have found shelter here since the war. I would like to mention our dear friend, the good friend of Poland, Dean C. R. Young, who is the Chairman of the Toronto Branch of the Canadian Friends of Poland, and who is at this table. It was he who, twenty-three years ago, together with Colonel A. D. LePan, organized the Polish Army Camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake, where the Polish flag flew many generations after it had disappeared from Polish soil.

Then I would like to mention the generous co-operation we are receiving from the Canadian Red Cross and from the I.O.D.E. That great organization is contributing a lot of effort in order to collect the money and the articles of relief for the women and children of Poland who are now in Russia to the number of at least a million and a half.

And, in the last place, I would like to pay tribute to my own people, the Poles-(applause)-the people who cannot speak for themselves. They are now in one concentration camp, which is Poland today. They are silent and will be silent until the great day of liberation, and we all believe that this day is not very far ahead. We are so certain of victory that we do not say "if", but "when"--when victory comes.

Let me tell you briefly what Poland, your ally, has done for this common cause. On September 1, 1939, Poland was invaded by the Germans from three different sides, north, west, and east, at the same time. We had tremendous handicaps, enormous difficulties to overcome. Poland was the first country to be invaded. The Germans tried their new methods, never applied anywhere before. The Germans were the only nation well prepared for this war. Poland naturally was not adequately prepared. We were prepared, like all other peace-loving nations, for a peaceful economic and cultural development. Therefore, it was a tremendous handicap to fight against a nation which had been preparing for war, materially for the last seven years, and spiritually for generations. The whole German philosophy and methods applied by the German nation tended towards the conquest of the world.

Poland was the first country to resist domination. We had that spell of non-resistance to break. Before that, every country, big or small, signed on the dotted line. They were not prepared, nor was Poland prepared; but when we were attacked, we had no decision to make. There was but one reply for us to give: we will defend our country, our liberty, our traditions, our institutions, and at the same time do our best to prevent the Germans from inflicting their philosophy upon the entire world. Had Poland hesitated, signed on the dotted line, the whole unleashed fury of the German nation would have been turned westward, and the course of history would have been very different today. By resisting we made it possible for our Allies, the French and the British, to mobilize their forces and to concentrate them. So that when, eight months later, the German power turned westward to invade the north and the west of Europe, they had had the time in which to prepare and to resist.

We had a number of difficulties and handicaps in addition to those I have just mentioned. The Germans were three times stronger in manpower when the war started, fourteen times stronger in mechanized divisions, and seventeen times stronger in the air. That was before they started the war. Every day of the war was their ally and every day of the war was our enemy. The Germans killed many planes "asleep", before they could take off in the air.

The whole territory of Poland--as my friend, Mr. North Winship, the United States Consul General here, can testify--the whole territory of Poland was bombed, burnt and ruined. I saw Mr. Winship last on the 10th of September in Krzemieniel, a place 300 miles distant from Warsaw, and on the 10th of September that little place was bombed, and later every other town not only between Warsaw and Krzemieniel, but also between the Rumanian and the Russian border was ruined and destroyed.

This campaign officially, as the Germans put it, lasted only eighteen days, but in fact it lasted at least six weeks. A German official communique was issued as late as the 25th of October, some of the German planes having been shot down on that day. Resistance was put up in different places months after the official campaign was over.

One of our great handicaps was the climate. The ground was dry and the whole terrain of Poland could be used for German tanks and armoured cars to roll along and for heavy bombers to take off. And on the 15th of September, the fifteenth day of war and destruction, the rain came, blessed by the Polish people when it filled the valleys and the rivers with water and the hearts of the Poles with new hopes. We hoped that we would be able to resist until our Allies were able to come to our rescue.

Then a neighbor of ours came on our back. I mention this in order to make it possible for you to understand that it was supreme goodwill on the part of Poland to bury the hatchet with the Soviet Republic. The Soviets are now our Allies, and the magnificent resistance put up by the Russian peoples justifies our maximum goodwill in burying the hatchet. (Applause.) You can readily understand how difficult it was to be the first nation invaded and completely surrounded by enemy forces at the time. And yet Poland resisted all the time. Peace was not signed with the enemy. We had no collaborators with the enemy, no puppet government was formed in Poland, and, after the military campaign was over, our men and women kept resisting.

On the twenty-seventh day of the war Warsaw, an open city, surrendered only because there was no ammunition left. There had been no water for five days preceding the surrender, and there were as many as five hundred fires at the same time in the City, because the German incendiary bombs set them, there was no water to extinguish them, and, when the women climbed the roofs of the houses and buildings to extinguish them, they were machine-gunned by the German planes.

When it became impossible to fight on the territory of Poland, men who could carry arms escaped and went to the Near East and formed a brigade under General Kopanski. Most of them, however, went to France, and within a few months an army 92,000 strong was in readiness to take part in the Battle of France. These Polish troops fought seven days after the collapse. Then those who were south of the Maginot Line crossed the border to Switzerland, and the Swiss Officer-Commanding-in-Chief was there to meet them and to pay them a tribute due to brave soldiers. For few of them had shoes in good condition, and not many had hats, none had a round of ammunition, but every man carried his gun, the symbol of a gallant soldier. (Applause.)

But all those who could reach Atlantic ports did so and were conveyed in British, Polish, and Canadian ships to the coast of the United Kingdom, and in a few months' time, an independent army was formed in Scotland, which is still there guarding the coast of that glorious little country. The Polish soldiers and some of their families (very few of them have had the luck of having their families join them) have been shown such admirable hospitality that "the water that separates Poland from the United Kingdom", to use the words of Prime Minister Churchill, will be too shallow to form any obstacle in the future".

You have, no doubt, heard of the exploits of the Polish submarine Orzel, for forty-two days commanded by a sub-lieutenant who had no charts. She managed to get through mine fields from Tallin in the Baltic Sea and reported at some United Kingdom port ready for new action. Two ships of the Polish Merchant Marine left Dakar under similar conditions, without any charts, and reported in one of the British ports. The units of our Navy and Merchant Marine have never ceased to be in action. It was the good fortune of the Polish destroyer Plorun to be the first to sight and contact the Bismarck. Another Polish submarine, Sokol, has five German men-of-war to its credit.

You have heard of the "Polish avenging eagles"--our fliers. (Applause.) They have a number of enemy aircraft to their credit. In the year 1941 they made 1,430 excursions over the enemy territory, and have to their credit 590 German and Italian aircraft. (Applause) That was in the year 1941 alone. Of course, their defence of London in the months of September and October, 1940, made them known all over the world. Some of them are in Canada; we have an army camp and recruiting station at Windsor, and at Owen Sound we have a training centre where these boys from Canada and the U.S.A. are trained and sent to Great Britain. At Tobruk and El Gazalla the Poles have taken part in battles along with the Australians and the British.

And now, since we buried the hatchet with the Soviet, we have been able to have a Polish Army there. We have enough manpower for an army of 200,000 men. So far we have organized six divisions and 25,000 will leave Russia very soon, fully equipped, and will join the Polish Near-East Division under General Kopanski in Lybia.

You have probably heard jokes about the Polish airmen. Polish airmen are good in the air but their English is not very fluent. Mr. Reynolds, an American correspondent, reports his conversation with a Polish pilot who related to him his experience. He said that he had had a few shots at a German plane which was hit, and that the pilot tried to save his life by the use of his parachute. The Polish pilot said to himself: "Shall I kill him? I kill him, he is a German. I will not kill him he is a brave soldier. I will kill him, 1 will not kill him; I will kill, I will not kill. I will not kill him-because, damn it, I have no ammunition". (Amusement.)

Air Marshal Cunningham, who commands the Near East forces, is quoted as saying, "Give me three Polish fliers for each of my air squadrons and I will be all right".

Now that is what the Polish army has done outside of Poland and inside of it.

The civilian population in Poland carries on by means of sabotage, destroying the German transports going to Russia, and blowing up the ammunition dumps, sometimes making raids on those dumps and carrying away arms for the day of liberation. Women do their work as couriers, carrying secret correspondence, orders, throughout the territory and across the lines. The Polish population is helping as it can, some of them who cannot help actively, doing so by passive resistance. The Germans cannot get any co-operation from the Poles.

During the few weeks of the German campaign in Poland the Germans suffered great losses. According to Swiss sources, about 300,000 Germans lost their lives or were wounded-nearly a third of a million Germans! The best pilots and the best soldiers were out of commission for the time being. One thousand planes were destroyed or badly damaged; seven hundred tanks were destroyed or badly damaged. That meant eight months, delay for the enemy to strike the blow to our Western Allies.

Now, the whole territory of Poland, as I mentioned to you, was destroyed. But the occupation of Poland which followed the invasion has been a much sadder picture than the military campaign itself. I have here some interesting photographs, enlargements of snapshots found in Great Britain on the dead bodies of German pilots. They will show you what Poland is today, what the population suffers in the occupied country, the whole of which has been turned into one dreadful concentration camp. I would like to circulate these around with a request that they be returned to me. They will show you what Canada would look like if the enemy came to your own shores.

Poland has done everything that was in her power to do, and the Poles carry on offering resistance. One thing that we possess and have not lost is courage and confidence of full decisive victory. (Applause.)

The conditions which prevail in Poland today are so terrible as to baffle description, and I have it on good authority from an American who left Warsaw in Novem ber last,--only three months ago. He talked to German wounded soldiers who were evacuated from the Eastern front in Russia, and they said that conditions in Russia were so terrible that no words could describe them. They thought it was the limit, the most horrible things they had ever seen--until they came to Poland. When they reached Poland, they said that what they saw there surpassed all that they had experienced on the Eastern front. Women are being abducted, school girls at the age of 14 are being arrested, rounded up and supplied to the soldiers or the Gestapo agents. Young boys are being demoralized, taken to gambling houses, and given alcohol free. Sterilization is an approved thing, both of men and women.

All the museums and all the libraries have been looted, and what was not destroyed by bombs and shells was carried away by German professors who specially came to Poland (which they knew well) for that purpose. They had been the guests of the Polish professors before the war and had acquainted themselves with different museums, universities, and libraries, in order to come back immediately after the war was over and pack things with great care and organizing talent and take them back to their own country. Everything that had to do with Polish culture, showing that it was a thousand years old and distinct from German culture, was deliberately destroyed and burned, so that no trace would be left of what was Poland before the 1st of September 1939.

Our sacrifice and courage and faith have been an inspiration to our Allies.

In I941 we had two new Allies--the great power of Russia and the great power of the United States. This has had a very discouraging influence on our enemies. The Germans did not know what Russia meant, but they do know what the United States are. There are many Germans in the United States and they have great respect and admiration for what the United States can achieve. Many Germans have been to the United States. Many of them have received letters and books, magazines and newspapers, so they know what the United States means as an opponent. The 7th of December has had a tremendous demoralizing effect, just as the 22nd of June had a discouraging effect, upon the German population.

A further strengthening of the Allied camp was afforded by a common declaration signed in Washington by twenty-six nations, at the first of this year, which may be the beginning of our victorious advance. The twenty-six nations have a unanimity of mind, purpose, and effort. We are organizing not only for war to end war, but also for peace to begin a new development of united nations.

Further, if we compare our material assets, with those of our enemy, we shall see that the following items fall to our credit: I1% of the world's population is on their side, 89% on our side; steel: 18% on the enemy side, 64% on our side; coal: 33% on their side, 67% on our side; oil: 3 % on their side, 97% on our side; wheat: 141o for them, 66% for us; sugar: 13% for them, 51% for us; automobiles: I2% for them, 88% for us; cotton one on their side, everything, 100% on our side.

In addition to these figures, we have something more important: we have the confidence that our case is growing stronger, that we have more resources, that we have more power than they have. It is increasing on our side all the time. On the other hand, there are signs of the weakening of the Germans. In Russia and in Lybia they have lost manpower, so much so that it will be months before they can recuperate. They have lost youth and their best-trained men, both on land and in the air. They have lost time, they have to wait until spring to continue their offensive in Russia. That means delay, that means cause for unrest in the country itself. And they have lost their confidence; an invincible nation, a master race, a nation that "cannot lose" was forced to retreat, for the first time in Russia, then in North Africa. Something has gone wrong with their wonderful machine. It is like an engine that worked perfectly and suddenly develops a knock. It is difficult for the rulers of the Axis Powers to impress it upon their nations that they are still the master race that suffers no defeats. The moral effect of that is tremendous on a nation that had so far, until a few months ago, enjoyed a chain of continual successes. We can take it, we are used to it; but they are not used to taking it, they are used to winning all the time. So that every additional success on our part acts as a discouragement to them.

The Germans are frightened of air raids. They are frightened of cold. They sleep on down and cover themselves with down. When they got to Russia their blood was too thick to stand the cold which the Russians stand very well.

The Germans are frightened of diseases. They are not as immune to infectious diseases as the Russians. They seldom suffered from contagious diseases in Ger many, as they were so clean in their own land. They believed so much in sanitation, that this is turning against them in adverse conditions. The Russians will not die in thousands from diseases such as typhus, malaria, and even leprosy, and black death. (I am quoting these diseases from an official German communique.) A Siberian tribe of the Kirgiz, which suffers from black death year after year and is immunized against it, carried it to the Baltic countries and to Russia. To them it is not deadly, but it is merciless to the German soldiers, and not only kills their physique but also destroys the morale of their comrades.

The only hospital for lepers was near' Dvinsk, in Latvia. That hospital was bombed, and out of 100 patients, many were killed but 30 escaped and carried leprosy out with them.

There is another thing frightening to the German population. At first, when the Polish campaign began, the Germans had only small casualties; perhaps there was one family in a village, or in an apartment house, with a member killed or wounded. So he was a hero; he "died for his Fuehrer". But now there are several men who are killed or wounded in every family. In every village, town, or city, there are too many heroes to make the families happy and to make the nation comfortable.

These are the signs of weakening on the part of the Germans, but I would not advise my friends to be too confident. We must not think that "these wonderful Russians" will win the war for us: they will win the war for themselves. We have to win the war for ourselves. (Applause.) After going through the German invasion in Poland, I can only advise you most strongly and in most emphatic terms, my Canadian friends, to put forth every ounce of effort in order to win the war for yourselves. The important thing that keeps us alive and afloat through adversity, under grey skies, in very critical moments, is the confidence based on the belief that our cause is a right cause. Contrary to those blatant and pompous and boastful words of the Fuehrer and his accomplices, we have great leaders like Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Roosevelt and many others, who, in modest and moderate terms, appeal to their countrymen to do their utmost. We are fortunate enough, and you especially, members of the British Empire, to have inspiration coming from such a wonderful Sovereign as your Sovereign is. (Applause.) And I would like to end my address by quoting the message of His Majesty the King, the Christmas message, full of modesty, and faith in God, and belief that we will win and achieve complete victory, because God is on our side. This is what His Majesty said in his Christmas message

"If skies before us are still dark and threatening, there are stars to guide us on our way. Never did heroism shine more brightly than it does now, nor for attitude, nor sacrifice, nor sympathy, nor neighbourly kindness.

And with them the brightest of all stars is our faith in God. These stars we will follow with His help until light shall shine and darkness shall collapse".

With these words of your Sovereign, my friends, members of this glorious and great British Empire, I wish to finish my address and to thank you for the privilege of addressing you today. (Applause.)

MR. C. R. SANDERSON: Gentlemen, I am sure you will wish me to say how delighted we are to have Sir William Mulock with us at the head table, looking so well, and to tell him how much we admire him as, year after year, he passes birthday after birthday, just brushing them on one side, almost without noticing them. (Applause.)

And to Mr. Podoski, I also am sure you will wish me to express our very grateful appreciation for the eloquent way in which he has talked to us in our own language about his own brave and valiant country. (Applause.) Time and time again, through the centuries, that country has been bandied about by more powerful neighbours; time and time again, those powerful neighbours have divided it piecemeal amongst themselves; time and time again, it has been the victim of pillage and destruction, as armies have swept over it and swept back again. And yet, Gentlemen, refusing defeat, still fighting, determined to rise again despite the German attempts at obliteration which Mr. Podoski described, despite the fact, as he said, that Poland at this moment is one large concentration camp, this country of his looks forward full of faith and full of optimism to complete victory. (Applause.)

It is a great story, Gentlemen, and we are greatly indebted to Mr. Podoski. Let us assure him that, like himself, we look forward with confidence to a restored and unified Poland.