- POLSKA LUDOWA
opposed to all forms of co-operation with the Communist regime. Then in June
1947, when August Zaleski succeeded President Raczkiewicz, a 'Democratic
Concentration' was formed to contest the succession, and the divided political
elite lost the confidence of the ex-combatant organizations headed by General
Anders. Finally when Mikotajczyk returned from Warsaw empty-handed, he
failed to win the approval of the Government-in-Exile, and left for the USA
where a strong body of support ensured a long-lasting rift between the
Government and the American Polonia. Disunity reigned. President Zaleski,
isolated and unbending, stayed in office until his death in 1972. He was followed
in turn by Professor Stanisiaw Ostrowski in 1972-9, by Count Edward
Raczyniski in 1979-86, by Kazimierz Sabbat in 1986-9, and by Ryszard
Kaczorowski in 1989-90.
The Presidents-in-Exile retained a clear raison d'etre as the bearers of legal
authority and the guardians of the Constitution. But many of the officials who
surrounded them acquired a marked quixotic flavour. Every president
appointed 'governments' replete with prime ministers, cabinets, and cabinet
ministers. And what exactly were the duties of a Polish Minister of Agriculture
based in Kensington became the object of ribald speculation. President Zaleski's
first Prime Minister, General Tadeusz Komorowski, sometime Commander of
the Home Army and Commander-in-Chief, was an unblemished patriot and a
highly respected figure. But none of his successors was a man of similar stature.
The ultimate scandal occurred in 1955 when the latest Prime Minister, 'Hugo
Hanke', was unmasked as a plant from the Communist Security Services in
Warsaw.
In the immediate post-war years, the most important problem for all Polish
exiles revolved round the dilemma of whether to stay abroad or whether to be
'repatriated'. The issue became specially acute after 1946 when the Second
Corps of General Anders was shipped en masse to Britain from Italy. The British
Government made its own preferences abundantly clear. A circular signed by
the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, urged all Polish citizens 'to return to your
homes in Poland'. It appeared that Bevin had not grasped that a large part of
those homes were no longer in Poland, but in the USSR. The response, therefore,
was meagre; and the British were obliged to make provision for a scheme of
official re-settlement. Thereon, the Polish Armed Forces in Britain were dis-
banded; and all of its members were required to choose between voluntary repa-
triation or the Polish Resettlement Corps, which was to accommodate about
200,000 people in fixed camps and to train them for British civilian life. A deter-
mined group of 'recalcitrants' who refused both options were forcibly interned.
But the time for making choices was ending. Long before the Resettlement
Corps concluded its work in 1949, a full-blown Stalinist regime had been estab-
lished in Poland, and the possibility of repatriation had passed.^28
The political disunity of the Polish exiles was compounded by the fact that
many were expecting the early collapse of the Warsaw regime together with the
outbreak of a 'Third World War'. They were living with their bags packed to