‘When Dmowski related the claims of Poland,’ recalled a despairing American official, ‘he began at eleven o’clock in the morning and in the fourteenth century, and could only reach 1919 and the pressing problems of the moment as late as four o’clock in the afternoon. Benes followed immediately afterward with the counter-claims of Czechoslovakia, and, if I remember correctly, he began a century earlier and finished an hour later.’
