by Mark Twain
DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES
VIENNA, January 5--I find in this morning's papers the statement thatthe Government of the United States has paid to the two members of thePeace Commission entitled to receive money for their services 100,000dollars each for their six weeks' work in Paris.
I hope that this is true. I will allow myself the satisfaction ofconsidering that it is true, and of treating it as a thing finished andsettled.
It is a precedent; and ought to be a welcome one to our country. Aprecedent always has a chance to be valuable (as well as the other way);and its best chance to be valuable (or the other way) is when it takessuch a striking form as to fix a whole nation's attention upon it. If itcome justified out of the discussion which will follow, it will find acareer ready and waiting for it.
We realise that the edifice of public justice is built of precedents,from the ground upward; but we do not always realise that all theother details of our civilisation are likewise built of precedents.The changes also which they undergo are due to the intrusion of newprecedents, which hold their ground against opposition, and keep theirplace. A precedent may die at birth, or it may live--it is mainly amatter of luck. If it be imitated once, it has a chance; if twice abetter chance; if three times it is reaching a point where account mustbe taken of it; if four, five, or six times, it has probably come tostay--for a whole century, possibly. If a town start a new bow, or a newdance, or a new temperance project, or a new kind of hat, and can getthe precedent adopted in the next town, the career of that precedent isbegun; and it will be unsafe to bet as to where the end of its journeyis going to be. It may not get this start at all, and may have nocareer; but, if a crown prince introduce the precedent, it will attractvast attention, and its chances for a career are so great as to amountalmost to a certainty.
For a long time we have been reaping damage from a couple of disastrousprecedents. One is the precedent of shabby pay to public servantsstanding for the power and dignity of the Republic in foreign lands; theother is a precedent condemning them to exhibit themselves officiallyin clothes which are not only without grace or dignity, but are a prettyloud and pious rebuke to the vain and frivolous costumes worn by theother officials. To our day an American ambassador's official costumeremains under the reproach of these defects. At a public function ina European court all foreign representatives except ours wear clotheswhich in some way distinguish them from the unofficial throng, and markthem as standing for their countries. But our representative appearsin a plain black swallow-tail, which stands for neither country, norpeople. It has no nationality. It is found in all countries; it is asinternational as a night-shirt. It has no particular meaning; butour Government tries to give it one; it tries to make it stand forRepublican Simplicity, modesty and unpretentiousness. Tries, and withoutdoubt fails, for it is not conceivable that this loud ostentation ofsimplicity deceives any one. The statue that advertises its modesty witha fig-leaf really brings its modesty under suspicion. Worn officially,our nonconforming swallow-tail is a declaration of ungraciousindependence in the matter of manners, and is uncourteous. It says toall around: 'In Rome we do not choose to do as Rome does; we refuseto respect your tastes and your traditions; we make no sacrifices toanyone's customs and prejudices; we yield no jot to the courtesies oflife; we prefer our manners, and intrude them here.'
That is not the true American spirit, and those clothes misrepresent us.When a foreigner comes among us and trespasses against our customs andour code of manners, we are offended, and justly so; but our Governmentcommands our ambassadors to wear abroad an official dress which is anoffence against foreign manners and customs; and the discredit of itfalls upon the nation.
We did not dress our public functionaries in undistinguished raimentbefore Franklin's time; and the change would not have come if he hadbeen an obscurity. But he was such a colossal figure in the world thatwhatever he did of an unusual nature attracted the world's attention,and became a precedent. In the case of clothes, the next representativeafter him, and the next, had to imitate it. After that, the thing wascustom; and custom is a petrifaction: nothing but dynamite can dislodgeit for a century. We imagine that our queer official costumery wasdeliberately devised to symbolise our Republican Simplicity--a qualitywhich we have never possessed, and are too old to acquire now, if wehad any use for it or any leaning toward it. But it is not so; there wasnothing deliberate about it; it grew naturally and heedlessly out of theprecedent set by Franklin.
If it had been an intentional thing, and based upon a principle, itwould not have stopped where it did: we should have applied it further.Instead of clothing our admirals and generals, for courts-martial andother public functions, in superb dress uniforms blazing with colour andgold, the Government would put them in swallow-tails and white cravats,and make them look like ambassadors and lackeys. If I am wrong in makingFranklin the father of our curious official clothes, it is no matter--hewill be able to stand it.
It is my opinion--and I make no charge for the suggestion--that,whenever we appoint an ambassador or a minister, we ought to confer uponhim the temporary rank of admiral or general, and allow him to wear thecorresponding uniform at public functions in foreign countries. I wouldrecommend this for the reason that it is not consonant with the dignityof the United States of America that her representative shouldappear upon occasions of state in a dress which makes him glaringlyconspicuous; and that is what his present undertaker-outfit does whenit appears, with its dismal smudge, in the midst of the butterflysplendours of a Continental court. It is a most trying position for ashy man, a modest man, a man accustomed to being like other people.He is the most striking figure present; there is no hiding from themultitudinous eyes. It would be funny, if it were not such a cruelspectacle, to see the hunted creature in his solemn sables scufflingaround in that sea of vivid colour, like a mislaid Presbyterian inperdition. We are all aware that our representative's dress should notcompel too much attention; for anybody but an Indian chief knows thatthat is a vulgarity. I am saying these things in the interest of ournational pride and dignity. Our representative is the flag. He is theRepublic. He is the United States of America. And when these embodimentspass by, we do not want them scoffed at; we desire that people shall beobliged to concede that they are worthily clothed, and politely.
Our Government is oddly inconsistent in this matter of official dress.When its representative is a civilian who has not been a solider, itrestricts him to the black swallow-tail and white tie; but if he is acivilian who has been a solider, it allows him to wear the uniform ofhis former rank as an official dress. When General Sickles was ministerto Spain, he always wore, when on official duty, the dress uniform ofa major-general. When General Grant visited foreign courts, he wenthandsomely and properly ablaze in the uniform of a full general, andwas introduced by diplomatic survivals of his own PresidentialAdministration. The latter, by official necessity, went in the meekand lowly swallow-tail--a deliciously sarcastic contrast: the one dressrepresenting the honest and honourable dignity of the nation; the other,the cheap hypocrisy of the Republican Simplicity tradition. In Parisour present representative can perform his official functions reputablyclothed; for he was an officer in the Civil War. In London our lateambassador was similarly situated; for he, also, was an officer in theCivil War. But Mr. Choate must represent the Great Republic--even atofficial breakfasts at seven in the morning--in that same old funnyswallow-tail.
Our Government's notions about proprieties of costume are indeed very,very odd--as suggested by that last fact. The swallow-tail is recognisedthe world over as not wearable in the daytime; it is a night-dress,and a night-dress only--a night-shirt is not more so. Yet, when ourrepresentative makes an official visit in the morning, he is obliged byhis Government to go in that night-dress. It makes the very cab-horseslaugh.
The truth is, that for awhile during the present century, and up tosomething short of forty years ago, we had a lucid interval, and droppedthe Republican Simplicity sham, and dressed our foreign
representativesin a handsome and becoming official costume. This was discardedby-and-by, and the swallow-tail substituted. I believe it is not nowknown which statesman brought about this change; but we all know that,stupid as he was as to diplomatic proprieties in dress, he would nothave sent his daughter to a state ball in a corn-shucking costume, norto a corn-shucking in a state-ball costume, to be harshly criticisedas an ill-mannered offender against the proprieties of custom in bothplaces. And we know another thing, viz. that he himself would not havewounded the tastes and feelings of a family of mourners by attendinga funeral in their house in a costume which was an offence against thedignities and decorum prescribed by tradition and sanctified by custom.Yet that man was so heedless as not to reflect that all the socialcustoms of civilised peoples are entitled to respectful observance,and that no man with a right spirit of courtesy in him ever has anydisposition to transgress these customs.
There is still another argument for a rational diplomatic dress--abusiness argument. We are a trading nation; and our representative isa business agent. If he is respected, esteemed, and liked where he isstationed, he can exercise an influence which can extend our trade andforward our prosperity. A considerable number of his business activitieshave their field in his social relations; and clothes which do notoffend against local manners and customs and prejudices are a valuablepart of his equipment in this matter--would be, if Franklin had diedearlier.
I have not done with gratis suggestions yet. We made a great deal ofvaluable advance when we instituted the office of ambassador. Thatlofty rank endows its possessor with several times as much influence,consideration, and effectiveness as the rank of minister bestows. Forthe sake of the country's dignity and for the sake of her advantagecommercially, we should have ambassadors, not ministers, at the greatcourts of the world.
But not at present salaries! No; if we are to maintain present salaries,let us make no more ambassadors; and let us unmake those we have alreadymade. The great position, without the means of respectably maintainingit--there could be no wisdom in that. A foreign representative, to bevaluable to his country, must be on good terms with the officials of thecapital and with the rest of the influential folk. He must mingle withthis society; he cannot sit at home--it is not business, it buttersno commercial parsnips. He must attend the dinners, banquets, suppers,balls, receptions, and must return these hospitalities. He should returnas good as he gets, too, for the sake of the dignity of his country, andfor the sake of Business. Have we ever had a minister or an ambassadorwho could do this on his salary? No--not once, from Franklin's time toours. Other countries understand the commercial value of properly liningthe pockets of their representatives; but apparently our Government hasnot learned it. England is the most successful trader of the severaltrading nations; and she takes good care of the watchmen who keep guardin her commercial towers. It has been a long time, now, since we neededto blush for our representatives abroad. It has become custom to sendour fittest. We send men of distinction, cultivation, character--ourablest, our choicest, our best. Then we cripple their efficiency throughthe meagreness of their pay. Here is a list of salaries for English andAmerican ministers and ambassadors: