PARIS 1919 (36 page)

The United States lay somewhere in between. It too had memories of Poles: Tadeusz Kościuszko, a hero in the American War of Independence; the Poles on both sides in the Civil War; Paderewski packing the concert halls. By 1914, Poles were the largest single group of immigrants from Central Europe, perhaps 4 million of them, with their own newspapers, schools, churches and votes. The war awoke their latent patriotism but it also created divisions between pro-Allied and pro-German Poles, giving the impression that Poles were always quarreling with each other. But Americans were moved by the sufferings of Poland, just as they were by those of Belgium. Wilson gradually came around to supporting an independent Poland but he was noncommittal on its borders. “I saw M. Dmowski and M. Paderewski in Washington,” he told his fellow peacemakers in Paris, “and I asked them to define Poland for me, as they understood it, and they presented me with a map in which they claimed a large part of the earth.”
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When the French tried to get Dmowski's Polish National Committee recognized as the only representative of the Polish people, the British and Americans held back. They urged Dmowksi to build a coalition with Pi
sudski. The world's most famous Pole, Ignace Paderewski, undertook to bring the two men together. In December 1918, the British arranged for him to travel back to Poland on HMS
Condor.
(He played the old ward-room piano for the officers on Christmas Eve.) His arrival in Posen (Poznan) on Christmas Day, 1918, produced immense excitement. Street demonstrations turned violent, and by the time he left for Warsaw on New Year's Day, Posen had risen against its German rulers. In the hand of a huge bronze statue of the great German chancellor Bismarck, a wit placed a fourth-class ticket to Berlin.
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Paderewski came from a modest family in Austrian Galicia, where his father worked for a great aristocratic landowner. “A remarkable man, a very remarkable man,” the prince later reminisced to Nicolson. “Do you realise that he was born in one of my own villages? Actually at Chepetowka? And yet, when I speak to him, I have absolutely the impression of conversing with an equal.”
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Paderewski became an international star. Burne-Jones sketched him, George Bernard Shaw praised his musical intelligence, and women sent him love letters by the hundreds.

Voluble, untidy, he was a man of great learning with the open enthusiasm of a child. During the war he had vowed not to perform until Poland was free again. He devoted himself to raising money for Polish relief and lobbying the world's leaders. In the summer of 1916 he played, Chopin of course, at a private party at the White House. “I wish you could have heard Paderewski's speeches for his country,” Wilson told a colleague later, “he touched chords more sublime than when he moved thousands as he commanded harmony from the piano.” Paderewski's supporters later claimed that his efforts were responsible for Wilson's inclusion of Poland in his Fourteen Points.
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At their first meeting in Warsaw, Paderewski, the man of the world in his long fur coat, and Pi
sudski, the thin pale revolutionary in his shabby tunic, circled each other with suspicion. Pi
sudski needed both Paderewski's influence over the Polish National Committee in Paris and his contacts, while Paderewski wanted a Poland that spoke with one voice. The two men agreed that Pi
sudski would remain head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces and Paderewski would become prime minister at the head of a coalition government as well as Poland's delegate to the Peace Conference alongside Dmowski. Together they attended the celebrations, dinners, plays, even a mass in Warsaw Cathedral, to mark the opening of Poland's newly elected parliament. Dmowski and Pi
sudski remained as far apart as ever.
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Paderewski was still in Warsaw when the Peace Conference opened, so only Dmowski was on hand when Poland first came up at the Supreme Council in January. Pi
sudski had sent an urgent request for supplies, particularly weapons and ammunition, to help Poland hold off its enemies. The French suggested sending back the Polish army in France under General Haller. The easiest way to do this, said Foch, was to ship the men to Danzig, still under German control, and then down the railway to Warsaw. The British and the Americans were doubtful. Haller's army was in Dmowski's camp; its return to Poland might well produce civil war. Wilson saw another danger in using Danzig: “With the object of sending Polish troops into Poland we were going to prejudge the whole Polish question.” This, of course, was exactly what the French had in mind. When the Germans got wind of the proposal, they protested loudly. The army finally went back by land in April. Pi
sudski did not press very hard for its return. He had no wish to irritate the Allies even further by insisting on the Danzig route as Dmowski was doing; he probably did not care passionately about Danzig itself.
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On January 29, Dmowski was invited to explain to the Supreme Council what was happening in Poland. He took the opportunity to outline Poland's claims, or at least the ones he supported. He was not, he said, going to claim everything Poland had once possessed. Parts of Lithuania and the Ukraine no longer had a Polish character. Poland was, however, quite willing to help them out since they were a long way from being able to manage their own affairs. On the other hand, Poland should take possession of the eastern part of Germany. True, much of this had never been Polish, but there were a great many Poles living there, far more than the German statistics indicated. “These Poles were some of the most educated and highly cultured of the nation, with a strong sense of nationality and men of progressive ideas.” Even the local Germans looked up to them. Poland also needed the coalfields of Silesia and Teschen (Polish: Cieszyn; Czech: T
n). Lloyd George listened with obvious impatience and Wilson studied the paintings on the walls.
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