Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume I Part 33

Yet, in spite of this redeeming thing, the fact remains that one of the greatest curses of American life is the dram-drinking of distilled liquors at bars; and one key of the whole misery is the American habit of ''treating,''--a habit unknown in other countries. For example, in America, if Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry happen to meet at a hotel, or in the street, to discuss politics or business, Tom invites d.i.c.k and Harry to drink with him, which, in accordance with the code existing among large cla.s.ses of our fellow-citizens, d.i.c.k and Harry feel bound to do.

After a little more talk d.i.c.k invites Harry and Tom to drink; they feel obliged to accept; and finally Harry invites Tom and d.i.c.k, with like result; so that these three men have poured down their throats several gla.s.ses of burning stimulants, perhaps in the morning, perhaps just before the midday meal, or at some other especially unsuitable time, with results more or less injurious to each of them, physically and morally.

The European, more sensible, takes with his dinner, as a rule, a gla.s.s or two of wine or beer, and is little, if at all, the worse for it. If he ever takes any distilled liquor, he sips a very small gla.s.s of it after his dinner, to aid digestion.

It is my earnest conviction, based upon wide observation in my own country as well as in many others during about half a century, that the American theory and practice as regards the drink question are generally more pernicious than those of any other civilized nation. I am not now speaking of TOTAL ABSTINENCE--of that, more presently. But the best TEMPERANCE workers among us that I know are the men who brew light, pure beer, and the vine-growers in California who raise and sell at a very low price wines pleasant and salutary, if any wines can be so.

As to those who have no self-restraint, beer and wine, like many other things, promote the ''survival of the fittest,'' and are, like many other things, ''fool-killers,''

aiding to free the next generation from men of vicious propensities and weak will.

I repeat it, the curse of American social life, among a very considerable cla.s.s of our people, is ''perpendicular drinking''--that is, the pouring down of gla.s.s after gla.s.s of distilled spirits, mostly adulterated, at all sorts of inopportune times, and largely under the system of ''treating.''

The best cure for this, in my judgment, would be for States to authorize and local authorities to adopt the ''Swedish system,'' which I found doing excellent service at Gothenburg in Sweden a few years since, and which I am sorry to see the fanatics there have recently wrecked. Under this plan the various towns allowed a company to open a certain number of clean, tidy drinking- places; obliged them to purchase pure liquors; forbade them, under penalties, to sell to any man who had already taken too much; made it also obligatory to sell something to eat at the same time with something to drink; and, best of all, restricted the profits of these establishments to a moderate percentage,--seven or eight per cent., if I re- member rightly,--all the surplus receipts going to public purposes, and especially to local charities. The main point was that the men appointed to dispense the drinks had no motive to sell adulterated drinks, or any more liquor than was consistent with the sobriety of the customer.

I may add that, in my opinion, the worst enemies of real temperance in America, as in other countries, have been the thoughtless screamers against intemperance, who have driven vast numbers of their fellow-citizens to drink in secret or at bars. Of course I shall have the honor of being railed at and denounced by every fanatic who reads these lines, but from my heart I believe them true.

I remember that some of these people bitterly attacked Governor Stanford of California for the endowment of Stanford University, in part, from the rent of his vineyards.

People who had not a word to say against one theological seminary for accepting the Daniel Drew endowment, or against another for accepting the Jay Gould endowment, were horrified that the Stanford University should receive revenue from a vineyard. The vineyards of California, if their product were legally protected from adulteration, could be made one of the most potent influences against drunkenness that our country has seen. The California wines are practically the only pure wines accessible to Americans. They are so plentiful that there is no motive to adulterate them, and their use among those of us who are so unwise as to drink anything except water ought to be effectively advocated as supplanting the drinking of beer poisoned with strychnine, whisky poisoned with fusel-oil, and ''French claret'' poisoned with salicylic acid and aniline.

The true way to supplant the ''saloon'' and the barroom, as regards working-men who obey their social instincts by seeking something in the nature of a club, and therefore resorting to places where stimulants are sold, is to take the course so ably advocated by Bishop Potter: namely, to furnish places of refreshment and amus.e.m.e.nt which shall be free from all tendency to beastliness, and which, with cheerful open fireplaces, games of various sorts, good coffee and tea, and, if necessary, light beer and wine, shall be more attractive than the ''saloons''

and ''dives'' which are doing our country such vast harm.

My advice to all men is to drink nothing but water.

That is certainly the wisest way for nine men out of ten --and probably for all ten. Indeed, one reason why the great body of our people accomplish so much more in a given time than those of any other country, and why the average American working-man ''catches on'' and ''gits thar'' more certainly and quickly than a man of the same sort in any other country (and careful comparison between various other countries and our own has shown that this is the case), is that a much larger proportion of our people do not stupefy themselves with stimulants.

In what I have said above I have had in view the problem as it really stands: namely, the existence of a very large number of people who WILL have stimulants of some kind. In such cases common sense would seem to dictate that, in the case of those who persist in using distilled liquors, something ought to be done to subst.i.tute those which are pure for those which are absolutely poisonous and maddening; and, in the case of those who merely seek a mild stimulant, to subst.i.tute for distilled liquors light fermented beverages; and, in the case of those who seek merely recreation after toil, to subst.i.tute for beverages which contain alcohol, light beverages like coffee, tea, and chocolate.

This is a long digression, but liberavi animam meam, and now I return to my main subject.

The American commissioners were treated with great kindness by the French authorities. There were exceedingly interesting receptions by various ministers, and at these one met the men best worth knowing in France: the men famous in science, literature, and art, who redeem France from the disgrace heaped upon her by the wretched creatures who most noisily represent her through sensational newspapers.

Of the men who impressed me most was Henri Martin, the eminent historian. He discussed with me the history of France in a way which aroused many new trains of thought. Jules Simon, eminent both as a scholar and a statesman, did much for me. On one occasion he took me about Paris, showing me places of special interest connected with the more striking scenes of the Revolutionary period; on another, he went with me to the distribution of prizes at the French Academy--a most striking scene; and on still another he piloted me through his beautiful library, pointing out various volumes in which were embedded bullets which the communards had fired through his windows from the roof of the Madeleine just opposite.

Another interesting experience was a breakfast with the eminent chemist Sainte-Claire Deville, at which I met Pasteur, who afterward took me through his laboratories, where he was then making some of his most important experiments. In one part of his domain there were cages containing dogs, and on my asking about them he said that he was beginning a course of experiments bearing on the causes and cure of hydrophobia. Nothing could be more simple and modest than this announcement of one of the most fruitful investigations ever made.

Visits to various inst.i.tutions of learning interested me much, among these a second visit to the Agricultural College at Grignon and the wonderful Conservatoire des Arts et Mtiers, which gave me new ideas for the similar departments at Cornell, and a morning at the cole Normale, where I saw altogether the best teaching of a Latin cla.s.sic that I have ever known. As I heard Professor Desjardins discussing with his cla.s.s one of Cicero's letters in the light of modern monuments in the Louvre and of recent archaeological discoveries, I longed to be a boy again.

Among the statesmen whom I met at that time in France, a strong impression was made upon me by one who had played a leading part in the early days of Napoleon III, but who was at this time living in retirement, M. Drouyn de Lhuys. He had won distinction as minister of foreign affairs, but, having retired from politics, had given himself up in his old age to various good enterprises, among these, to the great Reform School at Mettray.

This he urged me to visit, and, although it was at a considerable distance from Paris, I took his advice, and was much interested in it. The school seemed to me well deserving thorough study by all especially interested in the problem of crime in our own country.

There is in France a system under which, when any young man is evidently going all wrong,--squandering his patrimony and bringing his family into disgrace,--a family council can be called, with power to place the wayward youth under restraint; and here, in one part of the Mettray establishment, were rooms in which such youths were detained in accordance with the requests of family councils.

It appeared that some had derived benefit from these detentions, for there were shown me one or two letters from them: one, indeed, written by a young man on the bottom of a drawer, and intended for the eye of his successor in the apartment, which was the most contrite yet manly appeal I have ever read.

Another man of great eminence whom I met in those days was Thiers. I was taken by an old admirer of his to his famous house in the Place St. Georges, and there found him, in the midst of his devotees, receiving homage.

He said but little, and that little was commonplace; but I was not especially disappointed: my opinion of him was made up long before, and time has but confirmed it. The more I have considered his doings as minister or parliamentarian, and the more I have read his works, whether his political pamphlet known as the ''History of the French Revolution,'' which did so much to arouse sterile civil struggles, or his ''History of the Consulate and of the Empire,'' which did so much to revive the Napoleonic legend, or his speeches under the const.i.tutional monarchy of Louis Philippe, under the Republic, and under the Second Empire, which did so much to promote confusion and anarchy, the less I admire him. He seems to me eminently an architect of ruin.

It is true that when France was wallowing in the misery into which he and men like him had done so much to plunge her, he exerted himself wonderfully to accomplish her rescue; but when the history of that country during the last century shall be fairly written, his career, brilliant as it once appeared, will be admired by no thinking patriot.

I came to have far more respect for another statesman whom I then met--Duruy, the eminent historian of France and of Rome, who had labored so earnestly under the Second Empire, both as a historian and a minister of state, to develop a basis for rational liberty.

Seated next me at dinner, he made a remark which threw much light on one of the most serious faults of the French Republic. Said he, ''Monsieur, I was minister of public instruction under the Empire for seven years; since my leaving that post six years have elapsed, and in that time I have had seven successors.''

On another occasion he discoursed with me about the special difficulties of France; and as I mentioned to him that I remembered his controversy with Cardinal de Bonnechose, in which the latter tried to drive him out of office because he did not fetter scientific teaching in the University of Paris, he spoke quite freely with me. Although not at all a radical, and evidently willing to act in concert with the church as far as possible, he gave me to understand that the demands made by ecclesiastics upon every French ministry were absolutely unendurable; that France never could yield to these demands; and that, sooner or later, a great break must come between the church and modern society. His prophecy now seems nearing fulfilment.

Among the various meetings which were held in connection with the exposition was a convention of literary men for the purpose of securing better international arrangements regarding copyright. Having been elected a member of this, I had the satisfaction of hearing most interesting speeches from Victor Hugo, Tourgueneff, and Edmond About. The latter made the best speech of all, and by his exquisite wit and pleasing humor fully showed his right to the name which his enemies had given him-- ''the Voltaire of the nineteenth century.''

The proceedings of this convention closed with a banquet over which Victor Hugo presided; and of all the trying things in my life, perhaps the most so was the speech which I then attempted in French, with Victor Hugo looking at me.

There were also various educational congresses at the Sorbonne, in which the discussions interested me much; but sundry receptions at the French Academy were far more attractive. Of all the exquisite literary performances I have ever known, the speeches made on those occasions by M. Charles Blanc, M. Gaston Boissier, and the members who received them were the most entertaining.

To see these witty Frenchmen attacking each other in the most pointed way, yet still observing all the forms of politeness, and even covering their adversaries with compliments, gives one new conceptions of human ingenuity.

But whether it is calculated to increase respect for the main actors is another question.

The formal closing of the exposition was a brilliant pageant. Various inventors and exhibitors received gifts and decorations from the hand of the President of the Republic, and, among them, Dr. Barnard, Story, and myself were given officers' crosses of the Legion of Honor which none of us has ever thought of wearing; but, alas! my Swiss-American friend who had pleaded so pathetically his heroic services in ''Dasting de vines und peers'' for France did not receive even the chevalier's ribbon, and the expression of his disappointment was loud and long.

Nor was he the only disappointed visitor. It was my fortune one day at the American legation to observe one difficulty which at the western capitals of Europe has become very trying, and which may be mentioned to show that an American representative has sometimes to meet.

As I was sitting with our minister, Governor Noyes of Ohio, there was shown into the room a lady, very stately, and dressed in the height of fas.h.i.+on. It was soon evident that she was on the war-path. She said, ''Mr.

Minister, I have come to ask you why it is that I do not receive any invitations to b.a.l.l.s and receptions given by the cabinet ministers?'' Governor Noyes answered very politely, ''Mrs. ----, we have placed your name on the list of those whom we would especially like to have invited, and have every hope that it will receive attention.'' She answered, ''Why is it that you can do so much less than your predecessor did at the last exposition? THEN I received a large number of invitations; NOW I receive none.''

The minister answered, ''I am very sorry indeed, madam; but there are perhaps twenty or thirty thousand Americans in Paris; the number of them invited on each occasion cannot exceed fifty or sixty; and the French authorities are just now giving preference to those who have come from the United States to take some special part in the exposition as commissioners or exhibitors.'' At this the lady was very indignant. She rose and said, ''I will give you no more trouble, Mr. Minister; but I am going back to America, and shall tell Senator Conkling, who gave me my letter of introduction to you, that either he has very little influence with you, or you have very little influence with the French Government. Good morning!''

And she flounced out of the room.

This is simply an indication of what is perhaps the most vexatious plague which afflicts American representatives in the leading European capitals,--a mult.i.tude of people, more or less worthy, pressing to be presented at court or to be invited to official functions. The whole matter has a ridiculous look, and has been used by sundry demagogues as a text upon which to orate against the diplomatic service and to arouse popular prejudice against it. But I think that a patriotic American may well take the ground that while there is so much sn.o.bbery shown by a certain sort of Americans abroad, it is not an unwise thing to have in each capital a man who in the intervals of his more important duties, can keep this struggling ma.s.s of folly from becoming a scandal and a byword throughout Europe. No one can know, until he has seen the inner workings of our diplomatic service, how much duty of this kind is quietly done by our representatives, and how many things are thus avoided which would tend to bring scorn upon our country and upon republican inst.i.tutions.

CHAPTER x.x.x

AS MINISTER TO GERMANY--1879-1881

In the spring of 1879 I was a third time brought into the diplomatic service, and in a way which surprised me.

The President of the United States at that period was Mr.

Hayes of Ohio. I had met him once at Cornell University, and had an interesting conversation with him, but never any other communication, directly or indirectly. Great, then, was my astonishment when, upon the death of Bayard Taylor just at the beginning of his career as minister to Germany, there came to me an offer of the post thus made vacant.

My first duty after accepting it was to visit Was.h.i.+ngton and receive instructions. Calling upon the Secretary of State, Mr. Evarts, and finding his rooms filled with people, I said: ''Mr. Secretary, you are evidently very busy; I can come at any other time you may name.''

Thereupon he answered: ''Come in, come in; there are just two rules at the State Department: one is that no business is ever done out of office hours; and the other is, that no business is ever done IN office hours.'' It was soon evident that this was a phrase to put me at ease, rather than an exact statement of fact; and, after my conference with him, several days were given to familiarizing myself with the correspondence of my immediate predecessors, and with the views of the department on questions then pending between the two countries.

Dining at the White House next day, I heard Mr. Evarts withstand the President on a question which has always interested me--the admission of cabinet ministers to take part in the debates of Congress. Mr. Hayes presented the case in favor of their admission cogently; but the Secretary of State overmatched his chief. This greatly pleased me; for I had been long convinced that next to the power given the Supreme Court, the best thing in the Const.i.tution of the United States is that complete separation of the executive from the legislative power which prevents every Congressional session becoming a perpetual gladiatorial combat or, say, rather, a permanent game of foot-ball. Again and again I have heard European statesmen lament that their const.i.tution- makers had adopted, in this respect, the British rather than the American system. What it is in France, with cabals organized to oust every new minister as soon as he is appointed, and to provide for a ''new deal'' from the first instant of an old one, with an average of one or two changes of ministry every year as a result, we all know; and, with the exception of the German parliament, Continental legislatures generally are just about as bad; indeed, in some respects the Italian parliament is worse.

The British system would have certainly excluded such admirable Secretaries of State as Thomas Jefferson and Hamilton Fish; possibly such as John Quincy Adams, Seward, and John Hay. In Great Britain, having been evolved in conformity with its environment, it is successful; but it is successful nowhere else. I have always looked back with great complacency upon such men as those above named in the State Department, and such as Hamilton, Gallatin, Chase, Stanton, and Gage in other departments, sitting quietly in their offices, giving calm thought to government business, and allowing the heathen to rage at their own sweet will in both houses of Congress. Under the other system, our Republic might perhaps have become almost as delectable as Venezuela with its hundred and four revolutions in seventy years[13]

[13] See Lord Lansdowne's speech, December, 1902.

On the day following I dined with the Secretary of State, and found him in his usual pleasant mood. Noting on his dinner-service the words, ''Facta non verba,'' I called his attention to them as a singular motto for an eminent lawyer and orator; whereupon he said that, two old members of Congress dining with him recently, one of them asked the other what those words meant, to which the reply was given, ''They mean, 'Victuals, not talk.' ''

On the way to my post, I stopped in London and was taken to various interesting places. At the house of my old friend and Yale cla.s.smate, George Washburn Smalley, I met a number of very interesting people, and among these was especially impressed by Mr. Meredith Townshend, whose knowledge of American affairs seemed amazingly extensive and preternaturally accurate. At the house of Sir William Harcourt I met Lord Ripon, about that time Viceroy of India, whose views on dealings with Orientals interested me much. At the Royal Inst.i.tution an old acquaintance was renewed with Tyndall and Huxley; and during an evening with the eminent painter, Mr.

Alma-Tadema, at his house in the suburbs, and especially when returning from it, I made a very pleasant acquaintance with the poet Browning. As his carriage did not arrive, I offered to take him home in mine; but hardly had we started when we found ourselves in a dense fog, and it shortly became evident that our driver had lost his way. As he wandered about for perhaps an hour, hoping to find some indication of it, Browning's conversation was very agreeable. It ran at first on current questions, then on travel, and finally on art,--all very simply and naturally, with not a trace of posing or paradox. Remembering the obscurity of his verse, I was surprised at the lucidity of his talk. But at last, both of us becoming somewhat anxious, we called a halt and questioned the driver, who confessed that he had no idea where he was.

As good, or ill, luck would have it, there just then emerged from the fog an empty hansom-cab, and finding that its driver knew more than ours, I engaged him as pilot, first to Browning's house, and then to my own.