POLAND: Swiss President

Warsavians gaped amazedly last week as Ignatz Moscicki, by birth a Pole, by title “Professor,” by profession an engineer, by naturalization a Swiss, was elected President of Poland.

This extravagant denouement to the Pilsudski revolution (TIME, May 24 et seq.) followed Marshal Pilsudski’s refusal of the presidency, to which Parliament elected him (TIME, June 7), and his curt intimation to the astonished Deputies that they had best elect “honest Ignatz Moscicki,” heretofore a total politicalnobody, but an intimate of Pilsudski.

“Honest Ignatz,”† though elected,** did not—according to gleeful correspondents—possess a dress shirt in which he could be inaugurated. Three days later—a shirt having been obtained and the ancient palace of the Polish kings well aired for the ceremony—he took the oath of office, while bluff brain-stormy Pilsudski lounged in a great carved chair, nearby, surrounded by his officers.

The interim Bartel-Pilsudski Cabinet (TIME, May 31) promptly resigned but President Moscicki requested its members to carry on temporarily.

Significance. Plain as a pikestaff loomed Pilsudski’s chagrin at not obtaining a three-fifths parliamentary majority—either at his own election or Moscicki’s—wherewith to amend radically the Constitution, increase vastly the executive power, and institute the broad program of reforms which he envisioned at the time of his coup.

An almost comic indication of how vastly Pilsudski bulks above “Honest Ignatz” was seen when the Marshal peremptorily “invited” the new President to reside in the Belvedere Palace, where Pilsudski himself is lodged.

President Moscicki is well and favorably known as the inventor of a potent synthetic fertilizer.

Counter threats. Militant “anti-Ignatz” demonstrations throughout Poland subsequently became so serious that President Moscicki was obliged toproclaim a state of emergency in Lemberg and a state of siege in Tarnopol, where rebellious Ukranians rioted and demanded the separation of East Galicia from Poland.

At Posen the self-appointed anti-Pilsudski régime of General Haller (TIME, May 31) issued ominous manifestoes.

†Allegedly changed from the Polish “Ignace” during hisresidence in Switzerland.

**By 281 ballots, 200 being polled for Count Bninski (Right), and 1 for M. Marek (Socialist), with 63 Deputies abstaining — mostly from the White Russian, Slav, National Workers, and Piast (Peasant) parties.