Re: Original Documents – Military Communiqués, Letters, etc.
Recent purchase to share with y’all. Having long held an interest in pre-war Warsaw architecture – the Royal Castle in particular - and also Edward Rydz-Śmigły, the controversial and oft maligned successor of Piłsudski as Marshal of Poland, this was an exciting acquisition.
These items were part of a large group of documents that belonged to Major / Lt. Col. Charles B. Moore, US Military Attache to Poland in 1923-4. The documents were obtained from the estate of Moore’s niece Mrs. Gay Montague Phillips of Toddsbury Gloucester Virginia. Moore’s rank is noted as both Major and Lt. Colonel in the various documents – strangely the lower rank in the later document.
The set consists of the ‘Minister for War’s’ invitations to Lt. Col. Moore and also General Edward Rydz-Śmigły for a concert and dinner held at the Chateau Royal (Royal Castle) in Warsaw on May 4, 1923. Also included is the programme for the evening’s concert. The invitations also serve as the dinner menu. They are printed on a heavy parchment paper, measuring roughly 6 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches (170 x 210mm). The text is in French, the common language of international diplomacy at the time.
For some reason Moore kept the general’s invitation as a souvenir of the evening. The reverse of Rydz-Śmigły’s invitation has a pencil sketch with what appears to have the city of Lwow marked. Could it be that Moore was seated next to Rydz-Śmigły, and during a dinnertime chat the 37 year old general sketched a military maneuver during the Polish border wars that had taken place only a few years earlier? Alas, we’ll never know . . .
Also pictured is the reverse of Moore’s invitation which has a French language note mentioning Prince Czartoryski.
Regards,
Tony
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