Diplomats -- United States -- Biography; Morgenthau, Henry, 1856-1946; United States -- Foreign relations -- 20th century
“Very well,” I said, “we’ll take Jadwin. Where is he?”
“I’ll have him meet you at the Crillon this afternoon,” said Pershing,
and he kept his word.
Johnson, Jadwin, and I organized our commission at the Crillon before
sunset that day. I left it to Jadwin to choose our executive secretary;
he chose Lieutenant-Colonel M. C. Bryant; we borrowed Major Henry S.
Otto from Hoover, and selected as Counsel, Captain Arthur L. Goodhart
who had been Assistant Corporation Counsel of New York.
That same night, Paderewski gave a dinner at the Ritz. In its
potentialities, in the sharp contrasts of character presented by the
guests, it was one of the most dramatic events connected with the
preparations for my trip to Poland.
The Versailles Conference was over. President Wilson, to whom the world
still looked for leadership, was starting home within an hour, taking
with him the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Treaty had just been
signed; the ink was scarcely dry on the signatures to that document
containing Article 93:
Poland accepts and agrees to embody in a Treaty with the Principal
Allied and Associated Powers such provisions as may be deemed
necessary by the said Powers to protect the interests of
inhabitants of Poland who differ from the majority of the
population in race, language, or religion.
And now, around that dinner-table sat, among others, Paderewski,
Dmowski, and Lansing, signers of the Treaty, and Hugh Gibson and myself:
Lansing, who as ranking member of the Peace Commission, represented the
government that held the balance of the world-power; Paderewski,
Poland’s Premier, who realized that the very life of his native land
depended on peace at home and good opinion abroad, and that these could
be secured only by a satisfactory settlement of the Jewish problem
within the Polish boundaries; Hugh Gibson, American Minister to Warsaw,
whose report on that problem had increased the storm of Jewish protest;
Roman Dmowski, the leader of Anti-Semitism in Poland, admittedly its
fomenter, who had found Article 93 a bitter pill; and I, who had been
appointed to go to Poland to find out the absolute truth.
Far from depressing me, this juxtaposition had a stimulating effect.
More than ever, I realized the delicacy of the task with which I had
been entrusted. In the respect paid to me at this dinner Dmowski’s
Anti-Semitism had obviously received quite a jolt, and I wanted to have
a talk with him. Paderewski, Lansing, and Gibson dramatically left the
table to hurry to the railway station and bid good-bye to President
Wilson. When they had returned and the dinner was over, I said to
Lansing:
“Here is your chance to tell Dmowski how the American Peace Commission
feels about our proposed work in Poland.”
Lansing assented, and after a brief talk with Dmowski, drew him, Gibson,
and myself aside, and I had my first man-to-man talk with the organizer
of the anti-Jewish economic and social boycott in Poland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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