On 8 May 1919 Lt. Józef Serafin Stanslicki established a Polish Army "Cipher Section" ("Sekcja Szyfrów"), precursor to the "Cipher Bureau" ("Biuro Szyfrów"). The Cipher Section reported to the Polish General Staff and contributed substantially to Poland's defense by Józef Piłsudski's forces during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–21, thereby helping preserve Poland's independence, recently regained in the wake of World War I. The "Cipher" Section's purview included both ciphers and codes. In Polish the term "cipher" (""szyfr"") loosely refers to "both" these two principal categories of cryptography. (Compare the opposite practice in English, which loosely refers to "both" codes and ciphers as "codes".)