Judge — March 1, 1913 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ambassadorial By JAMES HAY, JR. AMBASSADORS are of two classes: those who know enough to keep their mouths shut, and those who don’t know enough to say anything when they talk. When you get right down to brass tacks, the smoothest and flossiest way to be an ambassador is to have kicked in about twenty-five thousand dollars for the last presidential campaign and to have enough cash left to satisfy all the burglars on the other side of the water. This is the real ‘‘dollar diplomacy.” The principal business of ambassadors is to teach foreign servants how to make ice water. Yet an ambassador must be a society man, brave as a lion, unterrified by the lorgnette of a duchess, and undismayed by the taste of foreign tea. He must “‘entertain’’—which consists of standing at the head of a flight of steps and having a lot of fellows with cigar-box names shake hands with him and jabber at him through pomaded mustaches and brilliantined beards. In order to get through with the job properly and apropos, the ambassador hires an expert in court etiquette as soon as he reaches his destination. And, in return for a big fee, the expert tells him not to chew tobacco in pub- lic, advises him not to sing ‘‘The Star Spangled Banner’ to the king, and explains that he must walk behind all the other dip- lomats in all processions. Although the etiquette expert does not tell him so, he learns, along about the time that his term expires, that kings and dukes drop soup on their beards, much as other men do. An ambassador must also know how to read and write, and that is about all. One Elihu Root once remarked that a good ambassador is an excellent messenger boy—he must know how to stick the ‘‘A. D. T.’’ sign on his hat and get busy. There you have it in a nutshell. A lot of bunk has been handed out to the effect that ambas- sadors, full of shrewdness, duplicity and wit, sit around tables and flip the fate of nations to and fro, hither and yon, by the quiver of an eyelid or the stroking of a whisker. They are as- sumed to be as ready with an ultimatum as a bad man is witha gun. Everybody is convinced that wars are made or averted by the state of the diplomatic digestion—that ambassadors dash off a cup of coffee, and then dash down an empire. Speaking roughly, this is what happens: This.country becomes involved with another country. The THE OTHER SIDE. Fish (in the National Aquarium in Washington) —There is a good variety of the buman species on view to-day, Bill. Bunk. President and the Secretary of State con- fer, decide what is to be said to the other country, and put it on the cable. The ambassador gets the mes- sage, calls his carriage, rush- es up to the palace or the foreign office, reads the ca- blegram in a sepulchral tone to the Bunky Bazoo of the other country, and goes back home to await what that government will tell him to cable to the United States, But there are possibilities of tragedies in the careers of these diplomats. If an ambassador’s wife whispers that Mrs. Queen is a frowsy old thing or that Mrs. Empress is an old frump, it’s the blow-off then and there. Both countries are stirred immediately to their remotest depths and borders. National pride is wounded to the quick. The whole upshot of the mortifying episode is that the ambassador is ‘‘recalled,’’ meaning that he returns home with the mark of the iron boot adorning his person, That’s the trouble about the diplomatic service—women can’t keep their tongues still! ® For the most part, ambassadors have nothing to do but drink tea and get up late, The Honorable James Bryce, afflicted with beard and boredom, spent six years in Washing- ton as the representative of Great Britain, and he put in his time writing books and driving up and down Sixteenth Street. That's a map of the whole diplomatic world. Every real and famous diplomat is a shark at assuming the right attitude and proper expression in a carriage. There are to-day in Kansas and Montana men who are practicing the carriage ex- pression out on the country roads. If you can’t get away with it, the king’s equerry sniffs at you, and this is fatal in Europe. The lack of a regular uniform for American diplo- mats has broken the hearts of many ambassadors. An American ambassador has to appear at all functions wearing nothing but evening clothes and dodging the other diplomats, who throw all their high hats and fur coats on him, under the impression that he is a wooden- faced footman. Our ambassadors have sent to Washington many de- signs of what they thought would be the proper para- phernalia for them to wear at court functions, royal hunts and yachting parties. They took a look at all the radiant outfits into which the European and Asiatic ambassadors had been hurled by a corps of trusty re- tainers, lacer-ups and smoother-downs, and decided that they must be in the swim. One brilliant person had a ‘‘model suit’? made, put into it all the mingled splendors of the rainbow and the aurora borealis, and forwarded it to the then Secretary of State, with an PROPER LOCAL COLOR. Edwin—Have you read my new novel ? Edavina—I haven't, but it must be charming. The cover goes so well with my new drawing-room chintzes. comicbooks.com