This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.

The former U. S. Ambassador to Poland speaks out says America betrayed the Poles by allowing for a Soviet-backed government in Poland.

As an American, I can criticize the complacency of the American people. Lane reads from Robert Sherwood's "Roosevelt & Hopkins": 1943, the story of the Quebec Conference, where Hopkins, Roosevelt, and Churchill address the problems of the war with Japan: we should have friendship with the Soviet Union. For that decision, we sold European countries down the river, so today we are just as much to blame as Mr. Stalin for slave labor camps in Siberia. In 1943, Mr. Roosevelt had a number of talks with Polish leaders in which they brought out the possibility of the US appeasing the Soviet Union at the expense of the Polish people: we are not going to determine things in a political way; only a military angle. In December 1943, two of the most vital decisions which the US has ever taken: 30,000 square miles of Polish territory should be ceded to the Soviet Union, Tito should be considered as the head of the state of Yugoslavia. We violated the principles of the Atlantic Charter. Legal and moral debt: we must restore freedom in those countries. [description of the Atlantic Charter] Yalta Conference, 1945, confirmed secret agreements regarding Poland and Yugoslavia. Yalta was the death knell in democracy in Europe. The press almost unanimously acclaimed Yalta as one of the great stepping stones to universal peace.

In order to build a new world, we've got to tear down the false issues on which we're living today.

Concludes with unidentified speaker commenting on the speech. Fades out.

Transfer sheet attributes speech to Mr. Houe.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 69781
Municipal archives id: LT883