When the recital was finally over—and he did not deprive the audience of so much as one bow—he went home and ate dinner. Then he went to work on the memorandum. Thirty-six hours later—at eight A.M. on Thursday morning—it was delivered to Colonel House. Paderewski went to bed for the first time since Monday night.
His fatigue seemed well worth it a week later when the Colonel came back from Washington. “The President was very much pleased with your memorandum,” he said. “Now get ready. The first shot will be fired very soon!”
On January 22 President Wilson addressed Congress on “Essential Terms of Peace in Europe.” Paderewski, who was touring in the South at the time, picked up a newspaper the next day and read these words: “No peace can last or ought to last which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. I take it for granted ... that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life and worship ... should be guaranteed to all people who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.”
The words swam before his eyes. For the first time, the fate of Poland had been publicly mentioned as an official concern of the United States government.
On April 2, 1917, President Wilson came to an anguished but inevitable decision. He called upon the Congress to declare war against Germany. Full mobilization of the country’s manpower was immediately begun. Two days later, Paderewski, addressing the “Union of Polish Falcons,” the most important Polish-American group, called for the formation of a separate Polish army, to fight side by side with the Allies. An independent Polish army, he felt, would prove to the world as nothing else could that there was truly a Polish nation waiting for its moment of rebirth. After almost insurmountable difficulties, he finally won his point, and the governments of France and the United States allowed him to go ahead with his plans for the formation of the army. Two training camps for Polish volunteers were founded, and soon twenty-two thousand Polish-Americans had enlisted in “the Army of Kosciuszko.” For help in transporting so large a number of men to Europe, Paderewski turned to the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels. He, in turn, knew just the man to assign to the Paderewski case—a young Assistant Secretary named Franklin Delano Roosevelt whose admiration for the pianist dated from childhood. With Roosevelt’s enthusiastic, red-tape-cutting aid, Paderewski’s volunteers were quickly sent to Europe. There they joined with the European Poles to form an army numbering nearly one hundred thousand men, fighting under the banner of the white eagle.
Statesmen who had once believed that Poles could never be united were now confronted by the fact of a hundred thousand men joined by a common oath. “I swear before Almighty God, One in Three, to be faithful to my country Poland, one and indivisible, and to be ready to give my life for the holy cause of its unification and liberation. I swear to defend my flag to the last drop of my blood, to observe military discipline, to obey my leaders, and by my conduct to maintain the honor of a Polish soldier.”
The Polish army paid tribute to Paderewski in a superb and moving way. His name was inscribed on the membership list of each company. Every day at roll call, when the name “Ignace Jan Paderewski” was read, one hundred thousand voices shouted back, “Present!” This honor had been paid to a soldier only once before in history—to Napoleon. It had never before been paid to a civilian.
And then at last came the day on which the unselfish labors of the last three years bore glorious fruit. On January 8, 1918, as the war entered its last phase, President Wilson spoke to Congress on the peace that lay ahead. He offered a fourteen point program for what he hoped could be a just and permanent settlement of the world’s disputes. The thirteenth of these points was this: “An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.”
As Paderewski read the electric words, he realized that they were taken almost verbatim from the memorandum he had written for Colonel House after his Carnegie Hall recital exactly one year before. Paderewski’s work in America had been crowned with a success that not even he, full of faith as he was, could have imagined.
In Poland, news of the thirteenth point brought life-saving hope to the hearts of the beleaguered Polish people. On an entirely different level an earlier incident had already kindled a new flame of courage in the hearts of the people of Warsaw. It had happened during the final rout of Russian troops by an advancing German army. To gain time for their retreat, the Russians blew up the Poniatowski Bridge that spanned the river Vistula in the very heart of the city. The devastating roar of dynamite smashed windows and shook buildings for miles around. Even the solid Zamek shuddered to its foundation stones. The blast almost uprooted the statues in Palace Square. As the powerful vibrations ripped past him, King Sigismund tottered but stood firm. Yet even in their fright the people who ran through the square seeking shelter could not fail to understand his message. Soon the magical words were flying through the city. “Sigismund has shaken his sword!”