The warship sped toward Danzig.
At last the signing of the Armistice on November 11, 1918, brought the long horror to an end: Paderewski’s work in the United States was over, the greatest tour in his career a complete success. The next step in his mission would have to be carried out in Paris, where the statesmen of the world would soon gather to write treaties and to rearrange the border-lines of Europe.
In Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, Paderewski had a powerful friend. The experienced statesman now gave him some strong advice. It was essential, as Paderewski knew better than anyone else, that Poland be represented at the Conference table. But the Allies would never recognize a Polish government unless they felt that it truly represented all factions in Poland. At the moment most Allied leaders leaned toward Dmowski’s Polish Committee in Paris. But others were asking, “What about Pilsudski?”
What, indeed, about Pilsudski! A hundred times a day the name drifted across Paderewski’s mind like an ominous shadow.
Józef Pilsudski, the soldier-hero of Poland, had fought his country’s enemies for years on home ground. He had escaped from both Russian and German prison camps to organize a Polish army and a Polish underground. At the end of the war he had marched triumphantly into Warsaw and been acclaimed Chief of State. The government he had organized was strongly socialist, almost communist in character. It represented the left-wing factions in Poland, just as Dmowski’s Polish National Committee represented the right-wing factions. Naturally the peace negotiators would not do business with both groups.
“Someone,” Balfour said, “must unite these factions. Someone must go into Poland and persuade Pilsudski to cooperate with Dmowski to form a government that is truly representative of all Poles.” Obviously there was only one man in the world who had any hope at all of accomplishing such an assignment.
On Christmas Day the British warship that had carried the Paderewskis safely through the treacherous mine-infested waters of the North Sea dropped anchor in Danzig, Poland’s ancient seaport.
Danzig was in German territory and the Germans were not in the least enthusiastic about welcoming the man who was trying as hard as he could to relieve them of their share of Polish land. In the city of Poznań to which Paderewski proceeded from Danzig, a procession of school children carrying Polish flags was fired on by sniping Prussian soldiers. The windows of Paderewski’s hotel room were shattered by flying bullets, while he himself calmly tied his necktie. Street-fighting between Poles and Prussians immediately broke out and lasted for three days. “There is no doubt,” Paderewski wrote to Colonel House, “that the whole affair was organized by the Germans in order to create new difficulties for the Peace Conference.”
But no amount of threats and terrorism could stop the people of Poland from lining the railroad tracks between Poznań and Warsaw to cheer and shout and weep tears of joy while they waited in the snow to catch a glimpse of the man whose name had shone like a beacon of hope for four devastating years.