Poland: Welcome, Unrehearsed

The Warsaw press never mentioned the new U.S. ambassador’s time of arrival, and only a bundled-up group of U.S. embassy staffers and Poland’s deputy protocol officer waited amid piles of dirty snow on the station platform. But by the time John A. Gronouski, 46, stepped from the Chopin Express in Warsaw last week, more than 1,000 Poles in the station had figured out who was among them.

They gave Gronouski a tumultuous, spur-of-the-moment reception. “Our hearts are with you!” shouted a woman. “We wish you fruitful work!” cried another voice from the crowd. As a class of grade-school children swarmed around him, the gathering sang chorus after chorus of Sto Lat (100 Years), a sort of Polish version of For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. Gronouski responded in halting Polish: “It is hard for me to express how pleased I am to be able to work in this country, which is so dear to me as it is to millions of Americans of Polish origin.”

The grandson of a Polish immigrant, Gronouski became the first Polish-American to achieve Cabinet rank when he was appointed Postmaster General under Kennedy and Johnson. Given a chance, he could use his standing in Washington and his authentic Polish roots to break the current deep chill in

Polish-U.S. relations. That could be accomplished easily enough, if the Polish people had anything to say about Poland’s policies. As earlier visits by Richard Nixon and Bobby Kennedy showed, the Poles retain an irrepressible affection for the U.S.

Party Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka’s regime is another story. After a few years of relative friendliness in the mid-’50s, Gomulka has become increasingly hostile, now angrily denounces the U.S. for “barbarous bombing raids” on North Viet Nam. He also accused the U.S. of seeking to give West Germans an independent nuclear strike force. About the only subject that Gronouski is likely to find Gomulka & Co. agreeable on is food. The U.S. has sold more than $525 million in foodstuff to Poland since 1957; the Poles need more, and it will be up to Gronouski to negotiate the deal for new sales.

Service in Warsaw carries an added responsibility. For the past ten years the U.S. ambassador there has met for no less than 127 conferences with his Red Chinese counterpart. Gronouski’s predecessor, John Cabot (who moved on as deputy commandant of the National War College in Washington), met 20 times with the Chinese, delivering fruitless warnings to Peking to stay out of India and Viet Nam. Now it is the former Postmaster General’s Sisyphean job to deliver the messages.