Chapter 7: The Providential Man

Colonel Edward Mandell House, who had never accepted a political office, was more powerful than any man in Washington. He was the confidential adviser of President Woodrow Wilson. "His thoughts and mine are one," Wilson said of House, whom he regarded as the most unselfish, patriotic man he knew. No one in the country had a greater understanding of European affairs than House. "A super-civilized person," the French statesman, Clemenceau, said of him, "escaped from the wilds of Texas, who sees everything, who understands everything ... a sifting, pondering mind."

From the day he had left England, Paderewski had known that he could not succeed unless he somehow got to House and convinced him of the justice in Polish claims. But Paderewski was not the only foreigner in the country who wanted something from the Colonel. House was under constant siege by representatives of small countries who were hoping to gain something by the peace settlement. Since America was still neutral, House had to be careful in dealing with these men or even in seeing them. This is why Paderewski proceeded cautiously in his opening moves toward the Colonel. The fact that House's apartment was a three minute walk from Paderewski's hotel was an added source of frustration. So short a distance separated him from the man who could do so much for him!

Then one day early in 1916, his prayers were suddenly answered. Paderewski's discreet diplomacy had born fruit in a typical way. A Paderewski friend had wangled a letter of introduction from an Assistant Secretary of Agriculture to Mr. Robert Wooley, director of the U.S. Mint. Mr. Wooley was known to be a close friend of Colonel House. One day he sent word from Washington that he would be in New York in two days and would try to arrange a meeting between Paderewski and the Colonel. Paderewski was learning his new role in a practical way. As many a diplomat had done before and after him, he had gained his objective through a friend of a friend of a friend of the man he wanted to meet.

Mr. Wooley had sternly cautioned Paderewski against over-optimism. So his heart sank when he was greeted at the door by a radiant Madame Paderewska. "You are going to save Poland!" she cried, her beautiful eyes filled with tears. "I know it!" And as the two men walked the few blocks to House's East Fifty-third Street brownstone home, the practical man of business wondered even more at the Polish pianist's calm and complete faith in the events of the next few minutes. Well, perhaps he was right, but Wooley was inclined to doubt it.

Colonel House had marked half an hour off his tight schedule for his interview with Paderewski, so the two men did not waste time on small talk. Paderewski had been waiting a long time for this moment. He was ready for it. Pacing up and down the Colonel's library, he began to tell his story. Point by point he built his arguments for Poland, with a mixture of logic and eloquence that an experienced lawyer might have envied.

The half hour flew by. Nervously Mr. Wooley looked at his watch and then glanced at the Colonel. "Let him go on," House muttered. "Don't interrupt him."

An hour passed and then another hour. Whatever Colonel House's later appointments were, they were cancelled. Never in his career of listening to people who wanted something had he heard a man plead his cause so irresistibly.

When he had made his last point, Paderewski stopped and waited for the Colonel to speak. House's part in the two hour conversation was limited to three sentences, but they were the most beautiful words Paderewski had ever heard. "You have convinced me," he said, rising and holding out his hand. "I promise you to help Poland if I can. And I believe I can."

It was the beginning of a profound friendship between the two men, one so eloquent, and one so silent. And with the Colonel completely won over to his side, the door to the White House stood open to Paderewski at last. By the summer of 1916 House felt that the time had come to introduce the pianist to President Wilson. He arranged to have the Paderewskis invited to a diplomatic dinner at the White House.

Woodrow Wilson was a scholar and a statesman. He had been a college president before he went into politics. Such a man, Paderewski believed, would understand the justice of his cause.

There was great excitement after dinner that night when guests saw the piano in the East Room being opened. Was Paderewski really going to play? He was, they were told, since the President had asked him to do so.

Although President Wilson did not know a great deal about music, it did not take any special knowledge to get the message that the Polish artist was trying to convey by means of Chopin's music. Paderewski and Chopin had become partners in this enterprise, and never had the two worked together so eloquently. As Wilson and Paderewski talked briefly together after the performance, the pianist felt that he had won his country another powerful ally.

It worked both ways. Wilson, too, had won an ally. 1916 was an election year. Paderewski campaigned actively for Wilson's reelection all during the fall. Many Polish voters, following the lead of the Polish clergy, were Republicans. Paderewski convinced them that their country's first real hope in a hundred years depended on a victory for Wilson. In the end he delivered the large Polish vote almost one hundred percent.

On the day before elections, when the campaigner had expected to relax a little, came shattering news from Europe. Germany had issued a proclamation declaring that Poland was a free and independent nation. The freedom and independence, of course, were the affectionate gift of the German government. The story behind the "gift" was actually a simple one. Germany had previously shown no sign of any such good will to the Polish people. Far from it. As soon as the Russians had been driven out, the German and Austrian leaders had gathered over a map of Poland and had once more divided it up, this time in a two-way split--one half for Germany, one half for Austria. Now suddenly they were declaring the country reunited and free! Why?

Paderewski knew why. It was not Polish freedom the German leaders wanted. It was Polish manpower. They were convinced that if they presented Poland with independence, a million Polish volunteers would gratefully flock to enlist in the German army and could be used to fight the Russians in the East. The other reason for the move was a more subtle danger. If the Poles appeared to accept the offer and consented to be taken under the loving wing of Germany, then America and the Allies would lose interest in the cause of Polish freedom. Poland herself would be regarded as a friend of the enemy.

Paderewski saw through the trick easily. "This means only more suffering for my people," he told House. "It means that another army will be raised and that there will be more killing and more devastation!" He realized that everything he had won during the past few years was in danger of being destroyed in one day. Unless he acted quickly. But what could he do? Never before had he felt so cruelly his lack of real authority. If only he were the official spokesman for some truly representative Polish groups, so that when he spoke a firm majority of Poles spoke with him.

There was only one thing to be said for the fact that he had everything to lose: he could afford to take a desperate gamble. Cable lines buzzed between New York and Paris, Paris and Chicago, Chicago and New York. Within a few hours a statement was issued and flashed to every Allied country. The German offer was rejected, flatly and permanently. The message was signed by Paderewski and was approved by the Paris Committee and by several groups in the United States.

But what about the rest of his countrymen, Paderewski wondered. What about the millions of poor Poles who were not trained thinkers, who might not see the worm in the shining German apple? Would they support him, or would they demand the right to seize their freedom no matter who offered it to them?

He soon had his answer. Every Polish society in the country immediately voted to make Paderewski its official representative. They gave him full power of attorney to make decisions and to act for them in all political matters. From then on, when he spoke he was speaking with the voice of three million Polish-Americans.

Of everything that Paderewski had done, this was the coup that really made its mark on official Washington. "The first direct evidence of his capacity as a leader which impressed me," wrote an observer, "was his successful efforts to unite the jealous and bickering Polish factions in the United States.... I am convinced that Mr. Paderewski was the only Pole who could have overcome this menace.... His entire freedom from personal ambition made him the one man about whom the Poles, regardless of factions, appeared to be willing to rally. It was a great achievement, a triumph of personality."

The man who wrote this was Robert Lansing, the Secretary of State who had once smiled when an eccentric piano player had tried to talk to him about Poland.

The exhausting events of November 5 and 6 should have provided quite enough excitement and tension for any two days in a man's life. But they were only one part of the affairs that occupied him during those forty-eight hours. November 6, remember, was election day!

Woodrow Wilson had gone to Shadow Lawn, his summer house on the New Jersey shore, to wait for the election returns in comparative peace. It was a trying day for him, following a hard, bitter campaign. It was a day on which he chose his visitors with care. One of them was Paderewski.

In the quiet study at Shadow Lawn the two men talked for nearly an hour. Wilson spoke of his idealist's dreams of world peace and mutual trust between nations. He listened attentively while Paderewski, in turn, described his hopes for his own country. The President asked searching, practical questions. How could Poland survive without an outlet to the sea? Paderewski and House had often discussed this point over a map of Europe. He explained their ideas to the President. When the interview was over, Wilson said solemnly, "My dear Paderewski, I can tell you that Poland will be resurrected and will exist again!"

Paderewski went home exhausted but intensely happy. It had been quite a pair of days! He longed to go to bed, but the election returns were coming in faster and faster now and he could not settle down for the night until he knew for certain that everything was going as expected. He heard the then familiar--and now extinct--cry for which all America had once waited. "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" But the rest of the newsboy's cry was a catastrophe. "Wilson defeated! Hughes elected!"

Wilson defeated? Wilson who had just promised him his country's freedom? For two years he had worked inch by inch in the direction of the words he had heard only a few hours before. And now it meant nothing.

It was a cruel night, unnecessarily cruel as it turned out. By five the next morning the newspapers were out with a somewhat different story. Wilson had not been defeated. The Extra-hungry papers had simply neglected to wait for the California votes to be counted!

"I can tell you that Poland will be resurrected and will exist again," Wilson had said. And the promise was still good.