He soon had his answer. Every Polish society in the country immediately voted to make Paderewski its official representative. They gave him full power of attorney to make decisions and to act for them in all political matters. From then on, when he spoke he was speaking with the voice of three million Polish-Americans. Of everything that Paderewski had done, this was the coup that really made its mark on official Washington. “The first direct evidence of his capacity as a leader which impressed me,” wrote an observer, “was his successful efforts to unite the jealous and bickering Polish factions in the United States.... I am convinced that Mr. Paderewski was the only Pole who could have overcome this menace.... His entire freedom from personal ambition made him the one man about whom the Poles, regardless of factions, appeared to be willing to rally. It was a great achievement, a triumph of personality.” The man who wrote this was Robert Lansing, the Secretary of State who had once smiled when an eccentric piano player had tried to talk to him about Poland. The exhausting events of November 5 and 6 should have provided quite enough excitement and tension for any two days in a man’s life. But they were only one part of the affairs that occupied him during those forty-eight hours. November 6, remember, was election day! Woodrow Wilson had gone to Shadow Lawn, his summer house on the New Jersey shore, to wait for the election returns in comparative peace. It was a trying day for him, following a hard, bitter campaign. It was a day on which he chose his visitors with care. One of them was Paderewski. In the quiet study at Shadow Lawn the two men talked for nearly an hour. Wilson spoke of his idealist’s dreams of world peace and mutual trust between nations. He listened attentively while Paderewski, in turn, described his hopes for his own country. The President asked searching, practical questions. How could Poland survive without an outlet to the sea? Paderewski and House had often discussed this point over a map of Europe. He explained their ideas to the President. When the interview was over, Wilson said solemnly, “My dear Paderewski, I can tell you that Poland will be resurrected and will exist again!” Paderewski went home exhausted but intensely happy. It had been quite a pair of days! He longed to go to bed, but the election returns were coming in faster and faster now and he could not settle down for the night until he knew for certain that everything was going as expected. He heard the then familiar—and now extinct—cry for which all America had once waited. “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” But the rest of the newsboy’s cry was a catastrophe. “Wilson defeated! Hughes elected!” Wilson defeated? Wilson who had just promised him his country’s freedom? For two years he had worked inch by inch in the direction of the words he had heard only a few hours before. And now it meant nothing.