“Our commission,” I repeated, “is expected to conduct a real search for the truth, without prejudice; to be well balanced, the third member should be a man who will work judicially, but be unencumbered with a legal education and the quibbles that usually accompany it.” And, I added: “Both Johnson and I are lawyers.”
Pershing replied: “If you mean a man who will balance facts mathematically and then arrive at a conclusion, as an engineer does, then Jadwin is the man for you.”
“Very well,” I said, “we’ll take Jadwin. Where is he?”
“I’ll have him meet you at the Crillon this afternoon,” said Pershing, and he kept his word.
Johnson, Jadwin, and I organized our commission at the Crillon before sunset that day. I left it to Jadwin to choose our executive secretary; he chose Lieutenant-Colonel M. C. Bryant; we borrowed Major Henry S. Otto from Hoover, and selected as Counsel, Captain Arthur L. Goodhart who had been Assistant Corporation Counsel of New York.
That same night, Paderewski gave a dinner at the Ritz. In its potentialities, in the sharp contrasts of character presented by the guests, it was one of the most dramatic events connected with the preparations for my trip to Poland.
The Versailles Conference was over. President Wilson, to whom the world still looked for leadership, was starting home within an hour, taking with him the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Treaty had just been signed; the ink was scarcely dry on the signatures to that document containing Article 93:
Poland accepts and agrees to embody in a Treaty with the Principal Allied and Associated Powers such provisions as may be deemed necessary by the said Powers to protect the interests of inhabitants of Poland who differ from the majority of the population in race, language, or religion.
And now, around that dinner-table sat, among others, Paderewski, Dmowski, and Lansing, signers of the Treaty, and Hugh Gibson and myself: Lansing, who as ranking member of the Peace Commission, represented the government that held the balance of the world-power; Paderewski, Poland’s Premier, who realized that the very life of his native land depended on peace at home and good opinion abroad, and that these could be secured only by a satisfactory settlement of the Jewish problem within the Polish boundaries; Hugh Gibson, American Minister to Warsaw, whose report on that problem had increased the storm of Jewish protest; Roman Dmowski, the leader of Anti-Semitism in Poland, admittedly its fomenter, who had found Article 93 a bitter pill; and I, who had been appointed to go to Poland to find out the absolute truth.
Far from depressing me, this juxtaposition had a stimulating effect. More than ever, I realized the delicacy of the task with which I had been entrusted. In the respect paid to me at this dinner Dmowski’s Anti-Semitism had obviously received quite a jolt, and I wanted to have a talk with him. Paderewski, Lansing, and Gibson dramatically left the table to hurry to the railway station and bid good-bye to President Wilson. When they had returned and the dinner was over, I said to Lansing: