To get to Pilsudski’s funeral on time was not easy. I received the secretary’s telegram Thursday morning (May 16) and had to be in the church in Warsaw at nine on Friday morning and there were no regular trains or planes available. I got a plane and flew from Moscow to Minsk, noting with stupefaction the improvement in conditions throughout White Russia. The fields were extraordinarily well-planted and there were hundreds of new apple orchards beautifully tended, each tree with its trunk neatly whitewashed. Minsk, the traditional garbage heap of the Jewish pale, was clean and contained one enormous Government office building which would not have been out of place in Washington. The reports that my plane had a crash in Minsk were a pure invention. The flight was as easy and comfortable as could be. I then crossed the frontier by train and the Poles had waiting for me Pilsudski’s private car which they hooked onto a train that got to Warsaw an hour before the ceremonies began.
The Polish Government was obviously delighted that you should have sent a Special Representative (only Crosby, our Chargé
d’Affaires seemed somewhat miffed), and went out of its way to place me at the top of the procession by using a pleasant twist of the French diplomatic alphabet. I was the representative of “Amerique, États-Unis d’,” and not “États-Unis d’Amerique.” That put me for all the ceremonies next to Goering who, as representative of “Allemagne,” had place No. 1.
Goering swept into the Warsaw cathedral late as if he were a German tenor playing Siegfried. He has the usual German tenor proportions. He is at least a yard across the bottom as the crow flies! In an attempt to get his shoulders out as far as his hips he wears two inches of padding extending each one. It is useless. The shoulders just won’t go that far. He is nearly a yard from rear to umbilicus, and as he is not even as tall as I am and encases himself in a glove-tight uniform, the effect is novel. He must carry with him a personal beauty attendant as his fingers, which are almost as thick as they are short, carry long, pointed, carefully enameled nails and his pink complexion shows every sign of daily attention. His eyes pop wildly as if he were either suffering from a glandular derangement or still taking cocaine. His lips are as thin as those of an infant. When he was 250 pounds lighter, he must have been a blond beauty of the most unpleasant sort. He is really the most appalling representative of a nation that I have ever laid eyes on. He made me fell that the Germans will achieve nothing but a series of national disasters until they cease to take the Niebelungenlied seriously.
Goering stole the show from the moment he entered the cathedral, and it became not Pilsudski’s funeral but Goering’s great first-act entrance. Throughout the march from the cathedral to the aviation field — three hours in a drizzling rain — I walked behind the young Siegfried who struck poses every time a camera appeared.
The crowds that lined the streets were impressive. They were absolutely silent and did not even stir. At the field the troops marched past the coffin to the beat of a drum. The silence was more impressive than any music. That night we took the train for Cracow and the next day the march was repeated, ending at the Wawel, the old hill castle of the Polish kings. The Catholic Church did itself proud by putting on a really beautiful service. It was rather long, however, and Goering went to sleep.
Afterwards, President Moscicki held a reception for the representatives of the various nations and asked me to thank you personally for having sent a Special Representative for the occasion. The next day a had luncheon at the Potocki’s with Pétain. He and Laval had
been treated throughout as if they were unwelcome cousins from the country and Laval was sore ; but the old man was in great form. He is seventy-nine but after luncheon he kept a crowd of about thirty persons in screams of laughter for a half hour with an account of his attempts to avoid ice water on his visit to the United States during prohibition.
As Vienna is only two and one-half hours by plane from Cracow, I thought I might as well fly down and consult a decent doctor and did so. My last Cracow view was of a regiment turned out to do the honors as I got into the plane.