In 1940 Paderewski was named President of the National Council, which was the Polish government-in-exile. Together with President Raczkiewicz and General Sikorski, the three men were to operate wherever and however they could to keep alive the body and the spirit of Poland. But when France fell, Paderewski felt that he could do more if he could return to America. He was also sure that the United States could not remain much longer outside the conflagration that was sweeping across Europe.
In September Paderewski began his last (and what was to prove by far his most hectic) trip. His friends had been urging him for weeks to leave Switzerland as soon as possible. Great as his personal prestige and international reputation were, it was feared that, as the living spirit of exiled Poland, his life might be put in real danger at any moment. There were seven passengers in the two cars that left Riond-Bosson on September 23. One car was a Cadillac that Herbert Hoover had given Paderewski in Warsaw. The other one helped to carry the luggage of the party. At the Swiss-French border they were joined by an agent of the Sûreté Générale, the political police. Monsieur Garric had been assigned to the Paderewski party by the French Government to assist them in their journey, and he proved an invaluable addition before they were out of France. Time after time when the party was stopped for questions by various authorities, M. Garric merely flipped his lapel, revealing his badge, and the party continued on its way. And, of course, the name of Paderewski had the greatest possible effect. An official in the customs office at the Spanish border began to whistle the Minuet when he saw whose passports were passing over his desk.
Saragossa in Spain is the city that will go down in history as the only place ever to put Paderewski in prison. The President’s entire party was placed under house arrest, and the fact that they were allowed to stay in their hotel did little to relieve the affront.
“... to remain until Poland is free.”
For five days, under a flimsy pretext of being concerned for Paderewski’s safety, the authorities of Saragossa kept the seven unwilling visitors confined to their hotel. Finally a cable from President Franklin Roosevelt direct to Generalissimo Franco got them out. No apology, no further explanation was ever heard from Saragossa. But by October, after a happy and reasonably relaxed trip through Portugal, they all boarded the American Export liner Excambion, and on November 6 they sailed into New York harbor. It was Paderewski’s 80th birthday.
The Americans, who had loved and admired Paderewski for almost half a century, would have worn him out with receptions and dinners in his honor. But settling himself quietly in the Buckingham Hotel, he spent his time and strength in talking and corresponding with those who were most important to the present and future welfare of Poland. In June he asked to speak at a Polish war veterans’ rally in Oak Ridge, New Jersey. The day was hot and the rally itself was a steamy, exhausting affair. Paderewski went home very tired and feeling as though he had caught a cold. Within a week, on the 29th of June, several hours after a priest had given him the sacrament of Extreme Unction, Paderewski died.
At his funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with nearly 5,000 crowded inside and 35,000 outside lining Fifth Avenue and the adjacent streets, Cardinal, then Archbishop, Spellman eulogized Paderewski, saying “his death steeps the entire civilized world in mourning.” And then the train took his body to Washington where it lay in state in the Polish Embassy until the following day.
The President of the United States had personally arranged for Paderewski’s burial in a way that offered the greatest honor in the country’s power. By special order, the body was taken to Arlington Cemetery, ordinarily reserved for American citizens who have served in their country’s armed forces. As Paderewski’s coffin, mounted on a military caisson, entered the gates of Arlington, cannon fired a 19-gun salute, the highest number possible to anyone not the head of a state. Flanked by United States soldiers, sailors, and marines, and joined by a squad of Polish soldiers in Canadian uniform, the caisson moved to the very center of the Cemetery. There, under the mast of the battleship Maine, Paderewski’s coffin was placed in a vault “to remain until Poland is free.”
The world is indebted to Paderewski in a very special way. To it he brought a flaming vision of great music-making. He placed before his listeners in singular glory the music of Chopin, one of the greatest composers of piano music the world has ever known. He carried to corners of the earth some of the most powerful pianism ever to be heard, never deviating from his own highest standards of excellence. Then, when his country’s very existence was at stake, he proved himself an equal or even, in the opinion of some, a greater master in the arena of international politics. His genius extended to the devious ways of statecraft with the same penetration it had shown in the mastering of music’s subtlest arts. His ability to influence men was as forceful when he spoke as it had been when channeled through the keys of a Steinway concert grand. He was unique in his lifetime. Nor has he had a successor.