What, indeed, about Pilsudski! A hundred times a day the name drifted across Paderewski’s mind like an ominous shadow. Józef Pilsudski, the soldier-hero of Poland, had fought his country’s enemies for years on home ground. He had escaped from both Russian and German prison camps to organize a Polish army and a Polish underground. At the end of the war he had marched triumphantly into Warsaw and been acclaimed Chief of State. The government he had organized was strongly socialist, almost communist in character. It represented the left-wing factions in Poland, just as Dmowski’s Polish National Committee represented the right-wing factions. Naturally the peace negotiators would not do business with both groups. “Someone,” Balfour said, “must unite these factions. Someone must go into Poland and persuade Pilsudski to cooperate with Dmowski to form a government that is truly representative of all Poles.” Obviously there was only one man in the world who had any hope at all of accomplishing such an assignment. On Christmas Day the British warship that had carried the Paderewskis safely through the treacherous mine-infested waters of the North Sea dropped anchor in Danzig, Poland’s ancient seaport. Danzig was in German territory and the Germans were not in the least enthusiastic about welcoming the man who was trying as hard as he could to relieve them of their share of Polish land. In the city of Poznań to which Paderewski proceeded from Danzig, a procession of school children carrying Polish flags was fired on by sniping Prussian soldiers. The windows of Paderewski’s hotel room were shattered by flying bullets, while he himself calmly tied his necktie. Street-fighting between Poles and Prussians immediately broke out and lasted for three days. “There is no doubt,” Paderewski wrote to Colonel House, “that the whole affair was organized by the Germans in order to create new difficulties for the Peace Conference.” But no amount of threats and terrorism could stop the people of Poland from lining the railroad tracks between Poznań and Warsaw to cheer and shout and weep tears of joy while they waited in the snow to catch a glimpse of the man whose name had shone like a beacon of hope for four devastating years. Paderewski reached Warsaw on New Year’s Eve. The ovation that he received from the jubilant city was heart-warming, but it was not really significant. Tens of thousands of people in Warsaw might be parading the streets in his honor; but the success or failure of his mission depended on one man alone. On the first day of the hopeful New Year, Paderewski presented himself at the Belvedere Palace for his first meeting with Marshal Józef Pilsudski. CHAPTER 9 REBIRTH OF A NATION [Illustration: Statue.]