Warning

The U.S. note to Warsaw (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) offered some stern pointers on Poland's impending November elections, which, according to the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, are to be free & unfettered.

In view of "serious irregularities" during the recent referendum (including widespread suppression of Vice Premier Mikolajczyk's Peasant Party--TIME, July 8), the note declared: "[The U.S.] Government wishes to emphasize its belief that, inter alia, it is essential for the carrying out of free elections that 1) all democratic and anti-Nazi parties be allowed to campaign freely without arrest or threat of arrest . . . 2) all such parties are represented on all electoral commissions, and ballots are counted in the presence of [their] representatives . . . 3) results will be published immediately ... 4) there shall be an adequate system of appealing election disputes."

Britain seconded the U.S. note in almost identical language. It also added a compelling postscript: until free elections are assured, Britain would not return to the Polish Government the $16 million of Polish gold (shipped to London at the start of World War II).

Warsaw spluttered over this "insult to Polish sovereignty" (but failed to protest the erection of Red Army roadblocks following anti-Russian disturbances near Bialystok, in sovereign Poland). The U.S. was especially invited to mind its own business. "And by own business," cracked a Pole in Washington, "we mean the Mississippi primaries."

Poland's Army newspaper Polska Zbrojna berated "silly women who are laying up stocks of food, fearing the war in September."

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