In London he renewed old acquaintances, social and political. A peppery little Welshman named Lloyd George was Prime Minister. He thought the idea of a free, restored Poland one of the most ridiculous ideas he had ever heard. Others did not. Paderewski's friends from happier days now rallied around him to help with Polish relief work, even though England herself was beginning to feel the economic hardships of war. A Polish Relief Committee was formed and within four months had raised a quarter of a million dollars for relief. At its head was Miss Laurence Alma-Tadema, who had admired Paderewski since the long past day when she had first seen him posing for his portrait in her father's studio.
With affairs in Switzerland, Paris, and London under control, Paderewski was now free to turn his face towards the country that he firmly believed held the key to Poland's future. In January of 1915, he sailed for America.
When Paderewski returned to the United States in January of 1915 he had two missions to accomplish. The first was to raise money to feed the starving people of Poland. No one thought there was anything odd about the world-famous pianist devoting himself to the cause of his suffering countrymen. It was the sort of thing one expected of artists.
The second part of his task was much more complex. The war was only six months old. No one knew how long it would last, but some day it would be over. That much, at least, was certain. And when that day came, statesmen from all over the world would sit down in conference to draw the new boundary lines of Europe. If the dream of a free Poland were ever to become a reality, it would be then. But who among these statesmen knew or cared anything about the fate of a country that geographically had ceased to exist one hundred years ago? At the moment they had other things on their minds--such as winning a war. And in neutral America, the chief concern of responsible statesmen was the question of staying out of the war.
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.