January 24, 1919

Roman Dmowski came to lunch today and we had an interesting hour talking about our previous meetings in this turbulent world. First in Tokyo (1904), later (1906) in the city of the Tsars, that protean capital that has changed its name so often in the last decade. But Dmowski has sojourned in what we “old Russians” must now learn to call Leningrad through all its evolutions and transformations. He speaks Russian so well that he could easily pass as a simon-pure Russki, but I have much reason to believe that he would kill me if he knew I confided this truthful statement even to the pages of my locked diary.

Our first contact was in Japan while the war which upset the balance of power in the Far East was raging. He came ostensibly as an agent of the Polish Red Cross. He was flanked by two priests, and the announced purpose of their mission was to give spiritual and physical comfort to the very numerous prisoners the Japanese had taken. As a matter of fact (of course the Tokyo government had not the slightest objection to this), he and his priestly colleagues did everything they could to sap the loyalty of the Poles and to prevent them from returning to their Russian regiments—except perhaps for the purpose of spreading “dangerous thoughts.”

Our next meeting was in St. Petersburg in 1906, during the stormy sessions of the Second Duma. Dmowski was the chairman of the bloc that represented Poland in this motley assembly. He was rarely given a chance to speak his mind, not merely because he was a Pole but because of his well-known anti-Russian activities in Japan. But underground Dmowski was busy, very busy indeed.

After the séance in which by shirtsleeved diplomacy of the most outrageous description I reduced the Polish National Committees of thirty to a modest delegation of two, I am rather timid in approaching the Poles who were left out of the conference. But the two who were chosen, Paderewski and Dmowski, are my very good friends. Like all Poles I have met down to the present, Dmowski foams at the mouth when you mention the Soviets, but unlike most of his compatriots he knows what he is talking about because he was in Russia writing articles for a Cracow paper when the Red Dawn came. During these exciting days he had many amusing contacts with what he calls very fairly the “sub-leaders” of the Revolution, who were in it for what it might be worth to them, and today he told me of a conversation with one of them, which Dmowski thinks is very significant.

“You who know,” he had asked, “take me by the hand and tell me what is the objective of the Social Revolution? And further tell me what this stagnant and shabby old world will look like when you have realized your purpose?”

The “sub-leader” was stumped for a moment. “It is difficult to explain to those whose eyes have not been opened,” he stammered; then suddenly he became voluble. “You see that man over there smothered in sables, sneaking down that side street with apologetic steps?” “Yes.” “Well, he is a bourgeois and I am a proletarian. But when we have achieved our purpose, I will wear a sable coat and look like a bourgeois. With three good meals a day my belly will expand enormously and it will take a lot of sable skins to cover it. And—then I shall look like a bourgeois.” “And the man now wearing the sables, who is sneaking down the side street?” “Well, if he survives, he will be a proletarian. And if he works hard, he may wear a cotton tunic.”

I may be mistaken, but if Dmowski fashions the new Poland which is coming into the world with so many birth pains today a lot of people will be wearing cotton tunics, summer and winter. It seems to me that the nation he envisages is the old Poland with its manor farms stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea—owned by gallant knights and beautiful ladies who travel to Cannes in winter and to Baden-Baden in summer. Who have expensive tastes that make it necessary for their serfs at home to work hard—very hard indeed.