BY W. R.

MALINQWSKI
HE .uprising in Warsaw is st &he end of its seventh
week. The citizens have battled against the G e q n k s
for almost fifty days with magnificent courage and
heroism. In Warsaw proper the battle is being waged by
the entire population; men, women, and children have
joined the tight insupport of the underground army and
the fighting detachments of all political groups, including
the battalions of the Communist Polish Workers Party.
For the third time since the beginning of this war
,Warsaw is the symbol of a peoples struggle. Five years
after the defense of the capital in 1939, ,a year and a half
after the Battle of ,the Warsaw GZzetb in 1943, the
citizens of Warsaw are again paying a high price for their
countrys right t o freedom and independence. The democratic and progressive character of ,this struggle is t e d mony to ,the spirit prevailing in Poland today. For the
backbone of the undergmund and of the underground
army is the peasant and lzbor movements, which are
steeped in the traditions of democracy.
The present Battle of Warsaw is one of the greatest
tragedies of our t h e . For many long days the people of
Warsaw have been prevented from receivingsufficient
help from their allies largely by the still unresolved diAid
t
y of obtaining Russian cooperation in facilitating.
British and American aid. The U. S . 5. R., according to a
Tass statement of August 10, di~sclaimedall responsibility for the ilnsurrection in Wxsaw. w h a t is more, t h e
plight of the Polish fighters and the significance of heir
struggle have been &nost completely ignored by the fibera1 press of England and America. It is q&cialIy important, therefore, that we examine the conditions which
precipitated this struggle.
According to plans agreed upon by the Polish government and the leaders of the underground, the u p r k n g
was to coincide with the Gennan retreat from Warsaw.
On JuIy 30, through themedium of the Kosciuslco Broadcasting Station
MOSCOW,
the Polish groups in t h e
U. S . S. R., whicI1 for more than .two years. have accused
the Polish government of delaying the uprising, again
gppealed to the people of Warsaw to revolt against their
German oppressors (reported in the Manchester GtcrtrdL-m
on August 2 2 ) . Apparently, all Polish groups were now
i n agreement that She moment had come when Warsaw
was .to rise and engage the enemy in open war. As the
Germans began their evacuation of the city, they inddged
in their. usual mass executions and ordered the transfer
of factories, iogekher with their workers-the flesh and
bbod of the Polish underground army-to
the Rei&.
~

The German plans, which were about to nepfe fiVFTiXf3

of preparation by the undergroundfor this day, plus the
revolutionary tradition of the people of Warsaw, a tradition dating back to 1794, made the opening of the
Battle of Warsaw imperative. Everyone waited for Allied
victories as the signal to begin. Tlie uprising ,of a d o l e
people could not of course be timed as pciseLy as, for
instance, the iirvasion of the EuropeanContinent by the
Allied armies. It was dependent on many .ciramtances.
During the first pcriod of the 5ghtin.g the Polesconcentrated upon seizing &e bridges across the V d d a in order to preventthe Germans from reinforcing their
troops and to emble theRed Army to cxoss #&e diver into
the city proper. When this attempt pro$.edm premature,
they changed to gnerdla warfare wi&in1&lecity, aiming
to tie up major enemy forces u
n
l
t
i&
t
h
eXed Army should
arrive. In the present, third stage the upSsing has become
a struggle to survive until the Red Army takes Warsaw.
The prolongation of the figlit in Warsaw m k e s necessary large stoclcs of ammunition,arms, food, and medical
supplies. In response to constant appeals for help, the
Western Allies, according to the New Ymk Tima of
September 13, h a w finally sent plmes over W k a w a d
dropped one hundred tons of supplies, which were acknowledged by the patriots.
According
to Premier
Mikolajqk, however, the help that was promised Poland when he, was in Moscow has n d been forthcorning, despite the fact t h t a liaison oscer of the Red Axmy
has b,een in Warsaw since Augiit 7. It has also been revealed by Mikolajczyk that the ,United States a d Great
Britain failed to get permission to use -air bases on Soviet
territory mhich w ~ d have
d fac3itated the delivery of substantial aid. SubjectedLto intensive bomliardment by t h e
Luftwde, in constant need of more supplies (the underground has estimated .that five tons of food and ammunition are needed daily), and facing the German threat. to
execute hundreds of thousands of .civZians now held in
Pzuszkow G.mp in reprisal for the hsutrection,the
fighters of Warsaw have never,theless,not g i v p up.
After the Red Armys seiame of Praga, asuburb of
Warsaw, on September 14, Polish patriots could see t h e
attacking Russians. O n September 15, according to a
Moscowdcomuniquc!, Poles were still fighting .to secure
a hold on khha west bank of the Vistula so ns to facilitate
the Red A7rmys entrance into the city. On September 17,
General Box, commander of the patriots, reported that Soviet planes were dropping supplies to his forces.
In the medhtime the 2olish government, after M i h ~

B4S

lajczylrs negotiations withStalinandwiththePolish

,Committee of National Liberation,sent 5 conciliatory
memorandum to Moscow. It was agreed by the Polish
government in London and the Polish underground parliament that a new Polish goveriunent was to be formed
in liberated Warsawby Prime Minister Mikolajczyk, who
is also acceptable to .the Polish Committee of National
Liberation as &e future Polish Premier. However, instead
of renewed concentration on the problem of getting help
to the embattled capital of Poland, a useless discussion
to the timing of the uprising
was entered into with regard
andthe culpability of the leaders, a discussion which
merely served to veil &e real issue.
The uprising in Warsawhasshownthattheantifascist forces in-Poland now pIay an important role. The
sacrifices of these people mustnot be in vain. The words
of Premier Mikolajczyk, quoted in the-New Yorlc Times
on September 1, are a fittingexpression of the Polish
spirit. H e declared-that Poland would not cease fighting
as long as Germans stand on our soil and that Poland
could not be denled its natural right to kill Germans.
We may also recall the question posedby the labor leader
now President-designate of the 6olish Republic,
Iomasz Arciszewski, who recently arrived in London
*after five years of work inthe Polishunderground:
Should the Allies leave Poland unaided in the present
situation, the defeat will not be ours alone. For what will
of common, decent
then bethethoughtsandfeelings
men allover the world who ..took up arms in thesacred
figk for democracy and justice in international relations?
&

ias
ONTR4RY to the presss theory that it reports the news
straight, without reference to editorial oplnions, a
study conducted by t h i s bureau shows that Rooseveltand
Deweypapersdiffer sharply in the content of their front
pages. They devotealmostexactly the same proportion of
&eir front pages to the campaign, but they choose somewhat
different subjects and often angle the news.
Mora than half the stories in-the Roosevelt papers were
pro-Roosevelt;almost half of those in &he Deweypapers
favored the Republicans. In m3-1group the conteiit of about
one in everyfivestorieswas
favorable tothe opposition.
Three of every ten campaign stories on the front pages of
the Roosevelt papers were neutfal in content; between three
and four of every ten were neutral In the Dewey papers. B o t h
groups wereeven more partisan in terms of space than in
terms of nmlber of stories. Thus 56 per cent o the 2,089
column inches given to &e campdgn In the Roosevelt papers
was pro-Roosevelt or anti-Dewey material; 51 per cent of the
2,289 campaigninches in papers for Dewey favored him.
About one-fourth of the space in Roosevelt papers was neutral; $5 per cent was unfavorable to the Administration,

The NATION

Dewey papels gave a liktle more 5pace to neutxal and 18 per

cent to pro-Administration items,
If both groups of papers used the same material, they frequently showed their editorial preferen& in their headlines
and in the sections theycut or kept. Thus the Cleveland Plait$
Deder (pro-Dewey) headlined an A. P. storyPeace Say@
Seen for Smaller Fry, while the pro-Administration Richmond Times-Dispatch captioned it Deweys Fear Is Groundless Hull Asserts. The twopapersranprecisely
the same
story until, at the very end, the Plain Dealer, after quoting
Senator ConnaIly (Dm.), added a pro-Dewey quotation
from Senator
Vandenberg
(Rep.) ; the Times-Dispatch
quoted only Gonnally and closed with a favorable refeF.ence
to Hulls press conference omitted by &e Pldn Dealer.
Our study was based on an analysis of seven RooseveiC and
seven Dewey papers. Since digerences
in news coveragemight
be due to differences in the news available to the two groups,
t h e papers chosen were matched In terms of their circulation.
the regions in which they were published, and the time of
appearance. As typical pro-Roosevelt papersthe Ghicago Sun,
the Louisville Courier-Journal,the Philadelphia Record, the
Atlanta Constitztioz, the Richmond Times-Dispatch,the New
xork Post, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wereused,
Matched with thesewere the pro-Dewey Chicago Tribune, ,
the Cleveland PlainDealer, the Philadelphia Enquirer, the
Washington Times Herald, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Daily N e w , and h e Kansas City Stay. All fourteen
papers wereread from August 16 through August 26, excluding Sunday,. August 20, when- the full sample was not
available. Only the front pages were analyzed, since thesepresumablycontain the materialwhich editors and publishers
want to call to the attention of their readers.
Of a total of 369 stories in the Dewey papers, 119 wera
devoted to the campaign. In the Roosevelt papers 1 6 of 8G5
stories dealt with the candidates and their activities or other
political news. Thus in each group about 12 per cent of the
front-page material was on the c o d n g electian. In terms of
inches Dewey papers gave slightly more space
to the campaign
bhan did Roosevelt papers (9.4as against 8.7 per cent).
The major news breaks in the ten-day period covered were
BepulbLican and Democratic reactions tothe Dumbarton Oaks
conference, the controversy in the War Produdion Board over
Nelsons assignmegt to China and Wilsons resignation, and
stories about Pearl Harbor, army censorship, lhors role io
the campaign, and reconversion.The development of Republimn foreign policy received very different emphasis in the
two groups of papers. Dewey papers devoted four times as
mu& space to the Dulles-Hull conference as the Rooseveit
supporters (447 to 124 column inches). But the conference
betyeen Willkie and DuIles was given almost twice a3 much
space in pro-Administration as in pro-Republicanpapers
(101 to 61 coIumn fnches)-because Clrillkies agreement
to meet with Dulles was accompanied by a rebuff to! Dewey.
In general,then, the study shows dearly that editorrak
preferences influence the selection and treatment of campaign
news. And since a large majority of papers are anti-Administration, the greater part of the news to which the p&fic is
exposed has that slant.
BUREAU OF APPLIED SOCIAL RESEARCH9

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NPW YORIG