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Thereupon the Marshal suddenly dropped his bantering tone and said sternly: "Then I'll make it resign by occupying Warsaw.'

and the Presidential Guard, consisting of one squadron of horse and one company of infantry. General Rozwodowski, an old Austrian army officer and a You are rebel- bitter adversary of the Marshal, was appointed commander.

'Reflect a moment. ling against the Constitution.'

'I have thought it over. I am the First Marshal of Poland. I shall do what I think best.'

'No, you won't. We shall stop you. I promise you that I, the President of the Republic, freely elected by the National Assembly.'

During this dramatic dialogue Pilsudski had a squadron of the First Light Horse behind him, and the President a company of cadets from the Military Academy. The Marshal abruptly accosted the nearest cadet and asked him sternly: 'Would you fire upon the First Marshal of Poland?'

The young man answered: 'No, sir; but you shall not pass, Marshal, without the authority of the President of the Republic, who is the Commanderin-Chief of both of us.' Saying this, the cadet dropped his rifle with its fixed bayonet to a position of defense. The Marshal read in the eyes of these young men that they would do their duty. He made a short half-circle, and without saluting a person strode slowly away toward Praga. The die was cast.

After his dramatic interview with Marshal Pilsudski on Poniatowski Bridge, President Wojciechowski hastened to Radjiwill Palace, where the Cabinet was sitting, and informed the ministers what had happened. The Cabinet immediately decided to defend the city. The only forces at its disposal, however, were the Thirtieth Regiment of Infantry, which garrisoned the Citadel and was commanded by General Modelski, a friend of General Haller. In addition the Government had the six hundred cadets at the Military Academy, a battery of 75's, the aviation regiment stationed at Mokotow,

He decided to recover the two bridgeheads at once, and started an attack on one of them at 6.30 P.M. Machine-guns rattled, cannon roared, and the Government airplanes, flying very low, watched the movements of the Pilsudski forces. But the attack was easily repulsed and the Government was forced to evacuate Zankowy Square. By eight o'clock Pilsudski's troops had already pushed into the centre of Warsaw. The members of the Cabinet hastily left their offices under the very eyes of the Marshal's soldiers, who did not know what to do, and hastened off in automobiles to Belvedere Palace in the southern part of the city near the Mokotow aviation field.

Pilsudski's troops bivouacked in the Saxon Gardens, in the heart of the capital, while he set up a provisional government. The cadets, who were defending the approaches to the other bridge, finding themselves taken in the rear, retreated southward along Ujazdowska Avenue toward Belvedere Palace. About ten o'clock that night a regular street battle began in the Legation quarter and lasted for two days. The greater part of the city, which was under Pilsudski's control, was a scene of intense activity. The sidewalks were crowded with curious spectators. Pilsudski's partisans organized processions, which marched through the streets cheering for their leader. But the crowd was silent, motionless, and stunned. It was as if a cyclone had suddenly swept over the town and the people had not yet recovered their breath.

The newsboys were the first to profit by the coup d'état. They made little

fortunes selling extras. The Socialist papers were wild with joy, while those of the Government boldly condemned 'Mr. Pilsudski's sedition,' and assured the people that the constitutional authorities would soon recover control of the situation. Quiet prevailed during the remainder of that night, each party resting on its arms. The Government had just received important reënforcements, in the Tenth and Fifty-seventh Regiments of Infantry, which were reviewed by the President at dawn and immediately moved forward to attack Pilsudski's positions. They pushed down the three principal avenues from the south almost to the centre of the city. Simultaneously Colonel Modelski was to have made a sortie from the Citadel, which is in the extreme northern end of the town. This would have caught the insurgents between two fires and might have put them to rout. But Colonel Modelski, who was not sure of his officers, hesitated. In fact, he was arrested by them later, and the Citadel surrendered to the Marshal.

That afternoon the Marshal received heavy reënforcements in the Vilno division, and decided to counterattack the Government troops at once. Soon the rattle of machine-guns and the din of bursting shells filled the air. This fighting cost three hundred and two killed and one thousand wounded. A majority of the victims were civilians, who owed their fate for the most part to their own imprudent curiosity.

A seventy-five-millimetre gun was posted at the intersection of Marszalkowska Street, the principal commercial artery of the city, and of Hoza Street, and was firing southward toward Mokotow. Two little boys, the employees of a bakery, dressed entirely in white, stood hesitatingly in the doorway, carrying two huge pies in their hands. Addressing the officer who was in command of the gun, they asked:

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'I'm afraid not, my boys. You had better scamper home as soon as you can.'

A little farther down the street two young ladies were powdering their faces. One said to the other:

'Is n't it provoking! We shan't be able to get down to meet Paul and Jack.'

A more dramatic scene occurred a little later when a lady wanted to pass through the lines because her son, who was a Military Academy cadet fighting for the Government, was there and she wished to be with him. The soldiers would n't let her through. Thereupon, turning to the captain in command of a machine-gun battery, and with an expression of unutterable pathos in her voice, she asked:

'Captain, when will all this stop? Why are you fighting? Why are our Polish people killing each other?"

Visibly moved, the officer turned his head away and replied hoarsely, with tears in his eyes:

'I do not know, madam, I do not know.'

Then, recovering his self-command, he began to swear furiously at his

men.

At eight o'clock in the evening, when the Pilsudski forces were again pushing toward the Belvedere Palace, the two principal Conservative papers, Gazela Warszawska and Warszawianka, published special editions containing a proclamation of the Government, which declared, among other things: "The Belvedere has become the symbol of legality, and of loyalty to the Fatherland and the Constitution.' Optimistic reports had just arrived to the effect

These

that the Government had received heavy reënforcements; and the proclamation went on to say that the sedition would speedily be crushed. papers were printed and freely sold in the section of the capital controlled by Pilsudski's forces. That evening, however, detachments of Pilsudski's Sharpshooters took possession of the offices of both journals and stopped their publication for the next two days.

On the night between the thirteenth and the fourteenth of May Pilsudski prepared to capture the Belvedere Palace itself; and he attacked at dawn. Artillery, machine-guns, and tanks participated in the operation. The Government forces retired contesting every foot of ground. The first building captured was the War Office, where there was fighting with hand grenades in the corridors. The place had already been bombarded with artillery and was pretty badly wrecked. A little later the aviation field, together with practically all the airplanes, was captured, thus depriving the Government of the means of fleeing to Posnan, as Stanislaw Grabski wanted to do at first. Pilsudski's forces, including heavy detachments of his Sharpshooters, immediately followed up this success by a flanking movement against the Palace buildings proper.

The President and the members of the Cabinet were eating a late breakfast when an officer hurried in to tell them that the situation had become precarious. They immediately decided to flee through the Palace Park. A company of the Presidential Guards escorted them to a point where automobiles were waiting. With these they proceeded to Willanow, the famous summer residence of King Sobieski, seven miles south of Warsaw.

Consequently, when Pilsudski's forces entered the Palace at ten minutes past five that afternoon, only the servants were visible. A little later they found the Minister of Railways and the Chief of the President's Civil Cabinet in one of the rooms. These gentlemen had chosen to surrender rather than to trust to the uncertainties of flight. That night the Cabinet resigned, and a little later the President did likewise. Only half an hour afterward a division of troops commanded by General Lados, coming to the support of the Government, arrived from Pomerania. It attacked the capital from the west, but its advance was immediately checked by Pilsudski's artillery. Toward two o'clock the following morning the cannonading stopped. An armistice had been concluded, and the civil war was over.

HEINE'S EPITAPH

BY HUMBERT WOLFE

[Spectator]

WRITE me no epitaph —or only this:

'Here Heine lies, who lived, and wrote, and died.

They said he touched the height of earthly bliss,

Who loved and was a poet - but they lied.'

BLOODY DAYS IN WARSAW1

BY A. L. BRZOSKA

WHEN rumors reached Warsaw that certain military detachments in Rembertow, just outside the city, which were under the command of officers devoted to Pilsudski, were in a state of great excitement, cheering that leader, making threats against the Government, and planning to march into the capital, no one attached much importance to the report. We all knew that the President and the Cabinet were bitterly hostile to Pilsudski and his followers, and that the latter were exceedingly wroth at the appointment of a Conservative Ministry with Witos as Premier; nevertheless, we never dreamed that Marshal Pilsudski would resort to violence. Least concerned of all were the President and the new Prime Minister, who never tired of ridiculing the Marshal. The latter had been living in comparative retirement for some time, and they underestimated the peril.

As soon as Premier Witos had taken office the day before, he had ordered Kurjer Poranny, the Pilsudski organ in Warsaw, to be confiscated, because it had published an interview between the Marshal and the President in which the former characterized the new Government as a band of thieves. Late the same evening unknown parties fired several shots into Pilsudski's residence at Sulejowek. When the Przegled Wieczorny reported this incident the next morning- that is, on May 12it likewise was confiscated.

1 From Neues Wiener Tagblatt (Vienna Conservative daily), May 18

About noon that day we began to hear rumors that Pilsudski had taken command of several military detachments and was moving toward the city. Immediately afterward separate proclamations were issued by the President and by the Cabinet, stating that a few military units stationed in the vicinity of Warsaw had mutinied, and ordering them to return to duty at once. The general public, which first became aware that the situation was serious through these official pronouncements, was enjoined against any action likely to disturb the peace. An extra edition of Robotnik, a workers' daily, which was promptly confiscated, contained the first news that Pilsudski was actually marching on the city.

During the afternoon the Marshal occupied the suburb of Praga across the Vistula and the right half of the highway bridges leading to Warsaw. He at once dispatched an ultimatum from this point to the President, bidding him dismiss the Cabinet and threatening to put it out by force if he refused. The President, who was completely under the influence of Witos, took the Cabinet's side, and, imagining that Pilsudski would not go to extremes, tried to prevent violence by visiting the Marshal personally in an automobile and trying to get him to withdraw. Pilsudski stood firm, however, but characterized his action merely as a demonstration. Thereupon the President, indignant at this slight to his official authority, conferred on Witos unlimited power to enforce the authority of the Govern

ment. At the latter's bidding, the Minister of War mobilized the Warsaw garrison and ordered it to defend the city against Pilsudski. But he had misjudged the sentiment of the soldiers and their officers, for only the equivalent of one regiment and the cadets in the Military Academy remained on the side of the Government. All the others promptly marched over and joined the Marshal.

About seven o'clock that night the Government troops attacked the 'rebels' with both light and heavy artillery, machine-guns, armored automobiles, and tanks. But the insurgents were well armed, and, speedily taking the offensive, cleared the Government troops away from the Kierbedzia Bridge, captured the Royal Palace and the War Ministry, and hastened to seize the buildings occupied by the General Staff, the City Commandant, and the Cabinet offices.

Pilsudski made one serious strategic blunder. If he had not halted at the bridges when he occupied Praga, but had marched into the city immediately after his negotiations with the President, he could have taken possession of the town and imprisoned the Ministry without bloodshed. Instead of doing that, however, he paused to negotiate after his first success, and issued an appeal to his soldiers to avoid bloodshed as much as possible and to spare the opposing forces. Zeligowski, the former Minister of War, who is now a Pilsudski man, visited the President in order to resume negotiations. Immediately afterward leaders of the Left wing in Parliament likewise called on the Chief Executive with offers to mediate. But the President, who, it should be repeated, was completely under the influence of Witos, rejected Zeligowski's overtures and bluntly refused to receive the Parliamentary delegation. A third effort was made to reach an

agreement through the Speaker of the House, or 'Marshal of Parliament,' as he is called in Poland, which likewise ended in a fiasco, since Witos would not permit this official even to see the President. The Premier felt that his political career would be ended for all time if he yielded an inch. So he and the other members of the Cabinet fled in automobiles, attended by an escort of policemen, to Belvedere Palace, where they rallied such supporters as remained to them and made plans for defense.

By eleven o'clock that evening the whole city, with the exception of the aviation field, the Citadel, Belvedere Palace, the Cadet School, Parliament House, and the streets in their immediate vicinity, were already in the hands of Pilsudski and his soldiers. The Marshal appointed General OrlitzDrescher City Commander and General Burchardt Chief of Staff, and placed military guards at all public buildings and the railway stations. Infantry and cavalry units were bivouacked in the streets and parks. These were reënforced by many armed civilians, so-called 'Pilsudski Sharpshooters,' machine-gun detachments, armored automobiles, and batteries of light artillery. Munition trains, field kitchens, baggage wagons, ambulances, and the like, crowded the streets. The scene recalled the days of the World War when the victorious Germans swept into Warsaw, except that now civilians and soldiers chatted together good-naturedly, discussing excitedly the latest events. Here and there one heard cheering and shouts of, 'Long live Pilsudski,' 'Down withWojciechowski,' 'Down with Witos.' The regular police confined themselves to keeping traffic moving and maintaining order. But they were in a rather embarrassing situation in dealing with the Pilsudski Sharpshooters. Since the town was under martial law, they had

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