In charge of the mission to Warsaw was Vernon Kellogg, gifted both as a scientist and an administrator. Somehow he managed to get the point across to the iron-willed Marshal that if he expected American Relief supplies and money to feed and clothe the desperate Polish people, he would have to find a way of cooperating with Paderewski and the Paris Committee. Faced with so practical a necessity, Pilsudski capitulated and asked Paderewski to help him form a representative government. Paderewski himself was named Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Pilsudski remained “Chief of State.” It was a rather all-inclusive title.
The Americans were as good as their word. Better, in fact, because once they had reported back to their chief in Paris about the ghastly conditions in Poland, miles and miles of red tape were instantly cut in order to rush in the first supplies. Within a few weeks a life-giving stream of food, clothing, fuel, and medical supplies were pouring steadily into the country. Even Pilsudski was impressed. The A.R.A did its best for all suffering countries. But there seemed to be something special—almost personal—about its feeling for Poland, even though there was not yet an officially recognized Polish government. The pianist was a nuisance, Pilsudski must have thought privately, but he had his uses if his popularity made the Americans so generous.
What Pilsudski did not know was that there was indeed a personal attitude involved in the work of the American Relief Administration for Poland. For at the head of the organization was a man with a long memory—a former Stanford University engineering student who had once taken a flyer in the business of staging concerts.
Paderewski had completely forgotten that he had once saved a young man named Herbert Hoover from great financial distress. But Herbert Hoover had never forgotten it. The $400 debt that had meant so much to the student and so little to the artist had now been paid a thousandfold.
As Prime Minister of Poland, Paderewski moved his household into the Zamek. Did he remember the many times that the young music student had passed the royal palace and prayed for the day when a Polish leader would once more be in residence there? Perhaps. But Paderewski was too busy to spend much time reminiscing. The work of forming first a National Council of a hundred men and then a coalition cabinet of sixteen was incredibly difficult. In the course of his former career he had grown accustomed to long, hard work, but it was nothing compared to this! Poles, as we have seen, were not the easiest people in the world with whom to do business politically. And complicating life almost beyond endurance was Pilsudski. The Chief enjoyed long, drawn-out, usually pointless conferences that accomplished nothing except the complete exhaustion of the Prime Minister. He enjoyed them most at two or three o’clock in the morning, preferably just after Paderewski had finally managed to retire for the night.
“There is a smell of sulphur in the air whenever that man walks into a room!” Paderewski said, and he looked forward with increasing eagerness to the day when he could leave Warsaw for Paris and the Conference. What a joy not to be in the same city as Józef Pilsudski!
If the full story of Paderewski’s accomplishments at the Paris Peace Conference were told in this book, there would scarcely be room in it for anything else. The work of the next three months was the climax and the crowning achievement of his second career.
When Paderewski finally reached Paris, the Conference was in its eleventh week. His unavoidable delay in Poland, he quickly realized, had been a costly one. Dmowski had done his best in presenting the Polish claims. His five hour speech to the delegates was acknowledged as a masterful and scholarly treatise. But here was Dmowski himself to tell Paderewski that the Polish questions were all but decided and decided in the negative! Somehow nothing was going according to plan. Hostility, open and hidden, dogged his best efforts. “There is nothing to be done about it,” he announced flatly. “Everything is settled.” The opposition of Lloyd George to every one of his points, for example, practically guaranteed failure. What nation would go against the British leader just because of a minor issue like Poland?
Nothing was going according to plan.