If Westerners harbored any doubts about the role of the Catholic Church in sustaining the Polish national spirit, the recent visit of Pope John Paul II to his native land surely laid them to rest. And yet the Church's historic partner in the enterprise of keeping Polish nationalism alive is still generally overlooked. That partner is Poland's national literature.

Polish literature helped sustain the nation through centuries of oppression, and its role in the post-World War II epoch has been no less critical. From the Romantic classics of the nineteenth century to a (for Eastern Europe) remarkably free modern literature, Poland's authors and poets are its unsung heroes in the struggle to preserve an independent national culture.

The American “strategic trusteeship” of Micronesia, awarded by the United Nations after the Japanese defeat in World War II, is today giving way to a new political status for the islands. Tucked under the wing of the Federal Government since 1947—first as a ward of the Navy and* then of the Interior Department—the two thousand islands and atolls extending over three million-square miles of the Western Pacific are familiar only to those Americans old enough to have followed news of the war in the Pacific and of early A-bomb tests.

The Micronesian chain begins with the Marshalls, 2,200 miles southwest of Hawaii—Bikini, Enewetak, and Kwajalein are here—and ends with the U.S. Territory of Guam, 1,600 mile east of Manila. To the west of the Marshalls are the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM)—Truk and Yap among them. Above Guam stretch the islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), and below, the Republic of Palau.

If all goes according to the latest plan, “free and honest” municipal elections will have been held in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince on August 14, capping a three-phase process that began in the provinces six months ago. Can a quarter-century-old dictatorship hold “free” elections? What are the advantages of staggered balloting in a country the size of Maryland and with a mere five million inhabitants?

Plans for any type of election in a poverty-stricken, politically repressed island nation ruled by a “president for- life” are subject to skepticism. Yet an analysis of the “elections” may indicate something of the mood of Haiti's citizens and also reveal the nature of a regime that claims to be a “bulwark against communism” in the Caribbean and Central America.

On April 22, 1982, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc“) Duvalier was commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Duvalierist rule and wishing his subjects many more years of the same, when he dropped a bombshell.

Lulled by a serene exterior and enchanted by exquisite scenery, visitors to New Zealand continue to look upon it as “God's own country.” Roughly the size of Japan or the state of Colorado and populated by ten million cows, seventy million sheep, and a mere three million people, how could it be otherwise? Even the venerable James Reston has swallowed the line that New Zealanders are free of the problems that vex the rest of the world. “Otherwise, all is as silent here as the sheep in the fields,” he wrote after a visit to the Antipodes several years ago, “and this may be their most serious dilemma. For they make no trouble and therefore make no news.” No news, perhaps, but like most places throughout the world, New Zealand has its troubles.

For the past decade New Zealand has been having increasingly serious economic difficulties; and since the country is generally twelve to eighteen months behind major international economic movements, predictions are that conditions will continue to deteriorate, at least through 1983.