of the Left and the Centre being included in such a. coalition. Iii m:atiers of foreign p·olicy the PPS st1pported the· J;;eague o! Nations, stood for collectfve security, closest co-operation with the Western democracies and friendship with the Soviet Union. Tlie PPS always .denol\nced and opposed any imperialist aggres~ion •or threat of aggression. The determined attitude of the Polish nation towards German aggre~sion and invasion in 1939 And· the following years, was, to a, very great extent, the result 3i years of work by and guidance from the PPS. The decision fo defend the encircled Polish capital of Warsaw in September ~9?9 w~s, in the f(rst place, a decision of the PPS. Th·e underg,-ound activities, 1939-1945 · lmmediately after the capitulation of Warsa,". and just before' the e11try of the German troops into the -Capital, the PPS, like ~II the other Polish political parties, took the decision of !'\iss·olying_the legally existing Party organization, and embarki11g'on a new conspiratorial activity. No one could possibly entl'rtain th-e i1h1sion that a legal political existence under the Nazi occupation and the rule of the Gestapo would be possible. This· dould perhaps have been ·achieved, but at the cost of far1·eachii.1gcompromises of which the PPS·was incapable. Tbe September campaign was over, bnt the war we.nt on. The leaders of the PPS - all of them - considered resistance to the German invaders to be the main task of the Polish workers- Moreover, they saw, already then, that in the final stage of the war, fovaded and conquered nations would have- to stand up and deliv-er tihe f.inal blow to the German invaders. All this iU:volved tiie necessity of the whole Movement going underground, and t.ha-t from the very , outset. Consequently, the formation of the ;,r.eret Party organisation was embarked upon immediately. For .eonspirational purposes the Party adopted the name "The Mowment of the Working Masses of Poland", generally called the .W·.R,N. from the initial letters of its slogan: Freedom (Woluosc}: Equa,lity (1{6wno§c), Independence (Niepodleglosc). Only a. few words. can be said here about the heroic and unique work performed by the WRN under the German occupation. Thus, for instance, a large secret organisational network of the WRN comprised, already at the end of 1940, over 2,000 units. The underground Socialist Press and pamphlets 1·cached, in the course of the war, the amazing figure of 2 million copies. A Socialist military organisation was created lmder the name of OWPPS (Socialist Insurgent_ Military Detachementis), which was included; as a separate and distinct organisation, in the national scheme of the Underground Home Army (AK). There was, besides, a Socialist Militia, organised both on a territorial and on a factory basis• All these organisations played an outstanding rol~, inter alia in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. :he PPS played a prominent part in the work of the Polish tTnderground Sfate. It was represented in the· Secret Parliament whose chairman, moreover, was one of the outstanding Comrades 8 BibliotecaGino Bianco
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