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.