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Hlasko knew that this sort of attack could mean imprisonment on his return, but he wrote that "a writer without a fatherland is nothing, and I see no possibility, no accusation, no consequence which could tear me away from my land and my home." Last week Hlasko appeared at the Polish military mission in West Berlin, asked for an extension of his passport so that he could "attend school in France or West Germany." When the passport extension was refused, Marek Hlasko, 26, the most promising young writer of postwar Poland, defected to the West. Explained Hlasko: "They told me I would have to go back to Warsaw for at least three days, but I knew what that meant."