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!”