314 NIEPODLEGLOSC
- that only a government possessing the confidence of the Sejm and of the nation will
meet with our support...
- that any attempt at a coup d'etat will be met with determined resistance;
- that the nation will acknowledge no obligations to a government which seizes power
by such a coup...
- that every attempt at terrorism will be met with physical force.
We further declare that the President of the Republic, Ignacy Moscicki, unmindful of his
oath, having openly taken his stand with the dictatorship... should resign.
The Convention states that it is the will of the broad masses of the Polish people to
maintain peaceful relations with all neighbours... but also states that any attempts on
the part of imperialists ... to change the frontiers of the Republic will meet with deter-
mined resistance...
Long Live the Independent Polish People's Republic! Down with Dictatorship! Long live
the Government of the 'Workers and Peasants' Convention!^29
Piisudski's response was harsh. In the night of 9/10 September, the leaders of
the Centre-Left were arrested, and confined in the military prison at Brzesc-
nad-Bugiem. In October, at the opening session of the Sejm, the Chamber of
Deputies was packed with military officers carrying revolvers and drawn
swords. To his lasting credit, Daszynski, the Marshal of the Sejm, refused to
proceed under the threat of coercion. But in December, the gerrymandering of
the BBWR finally produced the desired result at the elections. The leaders of
the Centre-Left were put on trial. The final sentence on 15 June 1933 con-
demned A. Ciolkosz, S. Dubois, M. Mastek, and J. Putek, among others, to
three years' imprisonment. The principal defendants, Wincenty Witos,
Kazimierz Baginski, Wladyslaw Kiernik, Herman Liberman, and Adam
Pragier, were sentenced in their absence, having been permitted to escape
abroad. Their portraits appeared in every police station and town hall
throughout the land on the lists of wanted men. Meanwhile, the right-wing
opposition, in the form of Dmowski's Camp of Great Poland (OWP) was suf-
fering its own eclipse. Formed in 1926 in response to Piisudski's resurgence, it
had drifted deeper and deeper into nationalist xenophobia. Disbanded by the
police in March 1933 on the grounds of public security, it spawned several
gangs of political mobsters, including Boleslaw Piasecki's 'Falanga' (Phalanx)
and the 'ABC Group'. Towards the end of the decade, many of its less hyster-
ical members moved into the OZoN camp, thus ending for a time at least the
ancient feud between the disciples of the dead Pilsudski and those of the retired
Dmowski. Rivalry between the leftist and rightist wings of the opposition
ensured a smooth path for the regime, and made further oppressive measures
unnecessary. Abroad, opposition was focused on Paderewski's home at
Merges in Switzerland. Despite his formal retirement from politics, the former
Premier kept in close touch with his old associates, and his correspondence
from this period reveals his growing unease at the conduct of the Sanacja
regime. In 1932, news of the peasant strikes was sufficiently convincing for
General Sikorski to hint at the possibility of the Sanacja's, impending collapse:
