United States recognises the Polish National Committee

At four o’clock in the afternoon of 10 November 1917 the Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, sent a telegram to the United States ambassador in Paris, William Sharp. He instructed him to inform Roman Dmowski that the State Department had received his request for recognition of the Polish National Committee “as an official Polish organisation”, and added: “In reply the Department hereby authorises you to extend such formal recognition.” The United States thus joined France, Britain and Italy. The date of 10 November is given by the documents of American diplomacy and by some Polish studies. Others give 1 December 1917 or speak generally of the turn of November and December.

Washington had the most doubts about the matter. Polish Americans had been pressing for recognition for months. Lansing wrote that it was being requested by “nearly a million Poles” grouped in organisations that had placed themselves under the Committee in September. In America the Committee was represented by Ignacy Jan Paderewski, who on 4 October wrote to President Woodrow Wilson on behalf of the Polish National Department in Chicago. At the beginning of October the War Department announced that it fully supported the recruitment of volunteers for the Polish army in France that the Polish Americans were starting, provided that it did not include Poles liable to the American draft. The State Department, however, did not want to act behind Russia’s back. On 15 October, the day of the British recognition, Lansing telegraphed to Paris that bypassing the Russian Provisional Government in a matter that concerned it so directly might harm the whole undertaking. He also demanded a formal written request from the Committee. Dmowski handed it to Sharp on 18 October.

Russia’s consent could not be obtained. The Foreign Minister, Mikhail Tereshchenko, explained to the American ambassador in Petrograd that the Poles in Russia were deeply divided and that recognition of the Committee would cause great quarrels among them. On 2 November Lansing decided that in the general interest of the Allies he could delay no longer, and ordered the Russians to be informed. On 5 November the Americans learned that Italy had already recognised the Committee, and assured the French that they would do so “within a few days”. Two days later the Provisional Government ceased to exist, and with it the main reason for American caution.

American recognition was of particular importance to the Committee. Across the ocean lived the largest Polish community outside the Polish lands, which was also the main reservoir of volunteers for the Polish army. Recognition did not, however, make the Committee a government. In December Lansing agreed that the Committee could open an office in the United States issuing Poles with certificates of nationality, which were meant to protect them from being treated as enemy subjects. It could not, however, have the character of a consulate, since that would have required a recognised government. A few weeks later, in January 1918, Wilson announced his Fourteen Points, among them the demand for an independent Polish state with access to the sea.