Portents

Two pregnant rumors and a potent fact perturbed Poles last week.

The fact was that swashbuckling Marshal & Dictator Josef Pilsudski suddenly dismissed from command of the important Lemberg garrison General Wladyslaw Sikorski, a onetime (1922-23) Prime Minister of Poland. Reason: rash General Sikorski has just published a book denying credit to Marshal Pilsudski for having stopped by his generalship the Bolshevist advance into Poland in 1920. The credit should go instead, writes General Sikorski, to the supervising strategy of famed French Commander General Max Weygand.

One of the two pregnant Polish rumors of last week was that the Sanatzia party leaders adherent to Marshal Pilsudski have passed a secret resolution calling upon President Ignatz Moscicki of Poland to resign, and suggesting that the office of "President" be transformed into that of "Chief Executive" and vested in Marshal Pilsudski.

The other rumor, strongly confirmed, was that the Polish State Railways are expected to be transformed by negotiations now pending into a semiprivate corporation which will be financed by an $80,000,000 loan. Part of this issue would be floated in Manhattan by Blair & Co., and last week the project was reported to be waxing strongly, as President Albert Arthur Tilney of the Bankers' Trust Co. was rumored en route to Warsaw.