Let  be an ideal in , if  then , which shows that it is a principal ideal. Now suppose that , and let  of smallest degree, we'll show that .
We can see that  because for any element in an ideal, all of it's multiples are a part of it. Looking at , then given some  then by the division algorithm we have  such that  where either  or  but then . Now if  then we've found a polynomial with a smaller degree than  in  (namely ), so therefore we must have that  which means that .