Chapter 6: "they Will Listen"

All summer long the lovely town of Morges had its share of the Swiss tourist business, but no date in the year meant more to the hotel keepers, bakers, florists and other local businessmen than July 31. It was the happiest town holiday of the year. July 31 is the feast of the great St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus. It was, therefore, Ignace Paderewski's feast day. Paderewski had a great devotion to his noble patron, and St. Ignatius' day was the occasion on which friends from all over the world gathered at Riond-Bosson to celebrate with him.

As the years passed, the Paderewski feast day parties became famous as the most brilliant gatherings in Europe, for among the guests were the world's most talented and witty people. Great care was expended on these festive occasions not only on the refreshments, which were superb, but on the entertainment, which was unique!

The celebration of July 31, 1914, was as lovingly and carefully planned as all the others, but a cloud of apprehension hung over the day. One month had passed since the assassination of the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand. This act of violence had triggered the chain of events that would lead to the catastrophe of world war. An uneasy peace was still in effect, but no one could guess how long it would last. After Mass, the day, usually devoted exclusively to fun, was punctuated by closed-door conferences with military and diplomatic leaders.

But when the time came for the evening's festivities, everyone tried to relax and forget the troubles of the world, if only for a few hours. The dinner was one of Antonina's and the chef's greatest triumphs. The decorations--this year everything was ultra-Chinese--were a delight. The dancing was especially amusing because of the newly-imported American ragtime. The "ragging" music was provided by eight hands on two pianos. The hands belonged to Olga Samaroff, Josef Hofman, Ernest Schelling, and Rudolf Ganz. As for the entertainment! Schelling, who was Paderewski's favorite pupil, was its mastermind. At midnight he summoned the guests to the drawing room, where chairs had been set up for the performance. Tonight, the guests were told, they were in for an unprecedented treat--a world premiere! They were to hear the first performance of "a symphony by Schoenberg!" Arnold Schoenberg was the leading composer of a type of new music that was understood by very few people, and Paderewski was known to turn a particularly deaf ear in its direction. Hence the delighted laughter and applause when the audience heard that a "Schoenberg Symphony" had mysteriously turned up in manuscript at Riond-Bosson. Paderewski, for whom the entertainment was always a jealously guarded surprise, threw up his hands in mock horror.

To perform the new "symphony," Schelling and his fellow members of the "orchestra" had raided the kitchen and the rest of the estate for every noise-making instrument they could lay hands on: pots and pans, cups and saucers, eggbeaters and typewriters, hoses and horseshoes. With Schelling's frenzied conducting to urge them on, the musicians turned in a truly superb performance. At the climax of the work, pots, pans, dishes, garden tools, everything went hurtling into a large rain barrel, with a crash that could probably be heard across Lake Geneva. Overcome by the beauty of it all, the exhausted conductor himself plunged head first into the barrel.

As the last echo of golden sound died away, as the audience gathered its collective breath to unleash a chorus of "bravo's," the telephone rang.

The telephone had been ringing all day, bringing greetings from missing friends. Why, then, was there so ominous a quality in the sound of it now? Paderewski was summoned by the butler and disappeared up the short flight of steps that led from the drawing room. A few minutes later he appeared at the top step and looked down at the guests who were now conversing in tense whispers.

"My friends," he said quietly, "the war is here."

The war had come, as inevitably it would. The cost of the next four years in human life and human misery was something so dreadful that few people could even begin to imagine it. How ironic, thought Paderewski, that in the cataclysm of war would be found the means of freeing Poland from a century and a half of bondage. "We have known it would come," he told the men who gathered in his study at dawn on August 1, "yet we are not prepared. The gigantic armies of Germany and Russia will clash on this helpless body!" He pointed a finger at the map of Poland that lay on the table before him. "But while Poland's jailers attack each other, their captive will escape!"

Yet he shuddered at the thought of what would happen to his country in the immediate future. The geographical location of Poland made it an absolute certainty that the full impact of war would fall upon the defenseless country. The armies of Poland's three masters would ravage the land and strip it bare.

Politically, too, the situation immediately became dangerous so far as Poland's future was concerned. Within two weeks after the beginning of the war, the Czar of Russia issued a proclamation offering freedom and love to his beloved Poles! "The time has come when the dream of your fathers and forefathers will at length be realized!... Under the [Russian] sceptre Poland will come together, free in faith, in language, and in self-government!... With open heart, with hand fraternally outstretched, great Russia comes to you!"

Paderewski and his fellow-Poles could hardly keep from laughing a very bitter laugh indeed at this sudden change of heart on the part of Russia, for Russia had until then emphatically denied that there was such a country as Poland. It couldn't be, could it, that the Russians were hoping to line up Polish support against Germany and Austria, by dangling the hope of freedom before the Poles? The worst of this hollow offer was the fact that Russia was one of the allies of England and France. When the question of a free Poland finally came up, might the allies not be unwilling to act against one of themselves? Might they not say, "The question of Polish freedom is settled. Russia will take care of it!"

These problems and hundreds of others were all on Paderewski's mind during the next hectic weeks at Riond-Bosson, as he contemplated his country's future--and his own. Paderewski had already made himself a career rich enough and rewarding enough to fill the life of any one man. Now he was standing on the brink of a second career--a greater one, he believed. "My country before everything else," he had said so many times. "After that--art!"

The group at Riond-Bosson realized that the first thing they had to do was to organize a relief committee for the Polish victims of war. They asked the great Polish writer, Henry Sienkiewicz, author of _Quo Vadis_, to manage its affairs in Switzerland. The Paderewskis themselves then prepared to leave their home and go to Paris and London. Antonina was left in charge of Riond-Bosson, which overnight had become a refugee shelter.

In Paris, Paderewski conferred with his countryman, Roman Dmowski, who was attempting to organize some sort of national committee to represent Poland before the other nations of the world.

In London he renewed old acquaintances, social and political. A peppery little Welshman named Lloyd George was Prime Minister. He thought the idea of a free, restored Poland one of the most ridiculous ideas he had ever heard. Others did not. Paderewski's friends from happier days now rallied around him to help with Polish relief work, even though England herself was beginning to feel the economic hardships of war. A Polish Relief Committee was formed and within four months had raised a quarter of a million dollars for relief. At its head was Miss Laurence Alma-Tadema, who had admired Paderewski since the long past day when she had first seen him posing for his portrait in her father's studio.

With affairs in Switzerland, Paris, and London under control, Paderewski was now free to turn his face towards the country that he firmly believed held the key to Poland's future. In January of 1915, he sailed for America.

When Paderewski returned to the United States in January of 1915 he had two missions to accomplish. The first was to raise money to feed the starving people of Poland. No one thought there was anything odd about the world-famous pianist devoting himself to the cause of his suffering countrymen. It was the sort of thing one expected of artists.

The second part of his task was much more complex. The war was only six months old. No one knew how long it would last, but some day it would be over. That much, at least, was certain. And when that day came, statesmen from all over the world would sit down in conference to draw the new boundary lines of Europe. If the dream of a free Poland were ever to become a reality, it would be then. But who among these statesmen knew or cared anything about the fate of a country that geographically had ceased to exist one hundred years ago? At the moment they had other things on their minds--such as winning a war. And in neutral America, the chief concern of responsible statesmen was the question of staying out of the war.

In Washington, D.C., Robert Lansing, the United States Secretary of State, and therefore the most important man in the field of foreign policy, was surprised one day when his secretary told him that the pianist Paderewski had asked for an appointment. He was even more surprised when the famous man arrived in his office and began to talk, eloquently he admitted, about the ideal of a united and independent Poland.

Secretary Lansing was a true diplomat. Although the question of reuniting the former country of Poland was about the last thing in the world he had time to discuss, he listened courteously. His thoughts were all negative. "This man is way out of his depth. He's a sentimental idealist. What does he know about the cold, cut-throat facts of international politics? He's trying to do something that's impossible."

As gently as he could, Lansing asked a few pointed questions. Whom did Paderewski represent? The Polish government? There was no Polish government. The Polish people? But which ones? The German-Poles? The Austrian-Poles? The Russian-Poles? There was no such thing as a unified Polish people whose ideas the statesmen of the world would respect because of sheer force of numbers. As for the Poles in America, Lansing pointed out, they were more hopelessly divided than the Poles who actually lived in the divided country! Paderewski was only too well aware of this fact. He had often smiled over the old joke that says, "Put two Poles on a sofa and you have a new political party!"

In the United States several Polish relief committees were already in existence. Naturally each group was trying its best to snare the famous pianist for its own ranks. The minute his ship had landed, he had been besieged by their representatives. He had walked by the hour with them in Central Park, listening to each man's arguments in favor of his own point of view. He had committed himself to none of them.

The man who could actually bring off the task of unifying the American Poles would have to be a political genius, not a musical genius, Lansing thought. As he studied the flying hair and romantically flowing tie of his visitor, he decided that this was decidedly not the man to do it.

During the next few weeks Paderewski became accustomed to the faint smile with which government officials greeted him. He knew so well what they were thinking. "What does a pianist know about international affairs?"

As Paderewski prepared to cross the country and begin his tour, he felt discouraged but not despondent. The men he had seen in Washington were important men, but they were not the ones who would really count in the end. There was a man--exactly the right man--whose support he needed, the "providential man" for whom he prayed and waited. But he knew that God would send him when it was time.

The city of San Francisco was holding a great exposition. The committee had asked Paderewski to play a concert for the occasion, since he had always been San Francisco's favorite artist. When he replied that he was in the country to speak for Polish relief, not to play concerts, they willingly changed their offer. He could talk, he could play, he could do anything he liked. They in turn would guarantee him an audience of thousands who would be glad to hear whatever he had to say. It was a fine way to begin his career as a speaker, Paderewski thought. But as the day and finally the hour itself approached, he grew more and more nervous.

"What makes me think I can persuade an audience?" he asked his wife. "By playing--perhaps. But by speaking! And in English! How do I know they will even listen to me?"

Madame Paderewska's eyes did not stray an inch from the sock she was knitting. She smiled patiently and said for the tenth time that day, "They will listen."

As Paderewski walked toward the stage of the enormous auditorium that night, he longed for the blissful assurance he had once had of knowing exactly how every note was going to sound. He stepped out from the wings--and then stopped in his tracks at the breath-taking sight that greeted him.

The stage was bare except for the piano. Hanging behind the piano was an enormous flag that had been made only a day before. It covered the huge back wall of the building from one side to the other, and from ceiling to floor. A triumphant white eagle on a blood-red field! The flag of Poland!

Paderewski's nervousness vanished. He felt a great surge of confidence both for the present moment and for the future. The audience was cheering wildly, but as he walked to the front of the stage and bowed, a deep silence settled over the hall.

He said, "I have to speak to you about a country which is not yours, in a language which is not mine."

It was the first of over three hundred speeches. It was the opening of a journey that would carry him to every state in the country. He would travel thousands of miles to speak thousands of words. And with the unerring instinct of an artist, he had begun with a phrase that sent an electric shock through that first audience and every future audience that heard it.

"_A country which is not yours_--" Yet as Paderewski traveled from city to city, from platform to platform, more and more Americans began to sense a kinship with the country that did not even appear on the map. For the first time the bitter irony of the Polish situation became clear to them. Here was a country that had lost its freedom four years before America's had been declared. Yet Poland had been one of the first nations in the world to advance the beliefs on which America had been founded. "Already in the fifteenth century a self-governing country, Poland became, in 1573, a regular republic, with kings elected. In 1430, consequently 259 years before the habeas corpus of England ... Poland established her famous law 'No man shall be detained unless legally convicted.' Our broad, liberal Constitution of 1791 preceded by 57 years the Constitution of Germany and Austria, and by 114 years the so-called Constitution of Russia. And all these momentous reforms ... were accomplished without revolution, without any bloodshed, without the loss of one single human life. Does it prove our dissensions? Does it prove our anarchy? Does it prove our inability to govern ourselves?"

"_In a language which is not mine_--" Yet somehow he had made it his. Audiences that had loved Paderewski the pianist now realized that he was equally great as an orator, although he spoke simply and without dramatic gestures.

When he finished speaking, he would turn to the piano and continue his plea for Poland in still another language. He would play the music of Chopin, and when the listeners finally left the hall, they knew that they had lived through a unique emotional experience.

It was no wonder that money for Polish relief began to pour in. Few people who heard Paderewski say "Give me seed for this trampled, wasted land, bread for these starving!" could resist the appeal. Generous America took the forgotten Polish people to its heart. By presidential decree a special "Polish Day" was established, because in the eyes of America "Poland" had become synonymous with "Paderewski," the beloved artist who had so enriched the golden era of peace.

Although the first half of his mission had flourished beyond his greatest hopes, Paderewski felt that so far he had done very little about the second half. He had talked to plenty of government officials and diplomats, but they had little to offer beyond polite interest. Not until he had been in the United States for a year was he able to take the first sizable step. As he had known it must, it came through the intervention of one man, a man who was neither government official nor diplomat. He was the man to whom Paderewski would write, "It has been the dream of my life to find a providential man for my country. I am now sure that I have not been dreaming vain dreams."