The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2019 49 France and allowed to operate on French soil and organize Free Polish fighters. / Describing Poland as a “victim of force used as an instrument of national policy,” Secretary Hull announces that the United States will continue to recognize Poland’s government in exile. He tersely adds, “Mere seizure of territory … does not extinguish the legal existence of a government.” While neutral in the conflict, the United States refuses to reward aggressors with the imprimatur of international legiti- macy. As a nation-state, crushed by totalitarians, Poland no longer exists. As a people, as a hope for the future, it continues to live in the spirits of its citizens and friends. / On Oct. 15, FSO George Haering and three vice consuls return to Warsaw on a special train provided by the occupying Germans. They grimly report on the destruction that includes Consulate General Warsaw and the ambassador’s residence, along with damage to 14,000 of the 17,000 structures in urban Warsaw. Military and civilian casualties run into the tens of thousands. Nonetheless, when the consulate general reopens some weeks later, a little of what was lost is regained. In a field report to the State Department, FSO Landreth Harrison asserts: “People in all walks of life frankly stated that when the Americans came back, it meant to them that Poland was not entirely forgotten by the outside world.” / In late September 1939, Ambassador Biddle arrives in Paris to preserve diplomatic contacts with the new Polish government. He will follow it to its temporary home at Angers, in the south of France. After the fall of France in June 1940, Biddle will then move to London, where he will be accredited by FDR not only to the Polish exiles but to a total of eight displaced governments overrun by Nazi invaders. Photographer Julien Bryan will successfully evade German