BANQUETS AND PERSONALITIES
I marvel how men in public life stand banquets, especially Italians, who
take to them like babes to mothers' milk. I fancy they often long for a
succulent chop and a baked potato, with a tray for mahogany and a book
for company! But the _banchetto_ gives them an alluring arena for
oratory, and my deliberate conviction is that the Italian has more
pleasure in speaking than in any other voluntary act. Not only does he
like to talk, but he likes to be talked to. The Italian language lends
itself to sonorous oratory, and one can become more impassioned while
delivering himself of simple thought and plain sentiment in it than in
any other tongue. Rome has always been the city of pilgrims. Formerly
they came in pursuit of the salvation of their souls; now they come to
help make the world safe for liberty. Missions, delegations, committees,
distinguished personages with their trains come nearly every day from
all parts of the world, and to each is given a banquet, to some many
banquets.
A diverting one was a luncheon given to a delegation of the Japanese Red
Cross headed by Prince Tokugawa. There were many distinguished
personages present, including the Premier Orlando, the minister of war,
the minister of the navy, Duke Torlonia, the directors-general of public
health and of military health, and other exalted or celebrated
personages "too numerous to mention." It was a pleasant party. The Japs
interested me very much. They looked less Oriental, if that means
anything, than their fellows with whom I have come in contact. I fancy
this is due partly to the fact that they were in uniform not unlike that
of American officers, and also they seemed bigger, that is--of greater
stature--and more deliberate and suave than many that I had previously
met. I talked to the Prince and found him intelligent and communicative,
without sign or display of royal prerogative. Professor Seigami
Sawamura, who sat on my left at lunch, is a lawyer who seemed to have
about the same point of view on ordinary topics that a well-educated,
cultured man of his profession in America might have. The man on my
right was----, who spoke English perfectly, and whom I discovered, after
a small attempt to draw him out on the political situation, to be an
adherent of Sonnino, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and of his entourage.
He seemed to be as devoid of capacity for constructive thought as any
educated Italian of thirty-five or forty in political life that I have
ever met, or perhaps it was that he had a wonderful facility for
concealing it. His small talk, however, was quite perfect, and I can
imagine that he might have radiated considerable luminosity in a
properly selected salon.
The speeches of the visitors and of the Japanese Ambassador to Italy
were most diverting. I have never been so entertained and instructed by
oratory of which I didn't understand a word. After the speeches were
delivered they were put into excellent Italian by a young attaché of the
Italian embassy who must have spent many years away from his native
sunny Italy in order to get the mastery of the Oriental language that he
displayed. Banquet speeches are, as a rule, a series of platitudes in
ornate dress, interspersed with sentiment and expressions of
appreciation and praise phrased diplomatically. These speeches had those
qualities--all save that of the Japanese Ambassador. His remarks had
been carefully prepared and were read. Undoubtedly they had been
submitted to the Mikado or his advisers before they were put before us,
for they stated the position of his government relative to the war,
narrated their reason for participation in its activities, and made
statement of their determination to have the efforts of the Allies
crowned with success.
The Italian premier, Orlando, replied. He is a real orator. Even below
the stature of the average Italian of the South, the large, shapely, and
well-poised head, surmounted with thick, closely cropped gray hair
brushed pompadour, the sparkling eyes, ruddy face, and genial expression
give you at once the feeling that you are in the presence of a man of
power, of resourcefulness, and of facility. No one could mistake that he
is a man of the people. There is no trace of arrogance or of
self-exaltation, and when he speaks you feel that his words are
fountained from sincerity. His remarks gave evidence of research and
careful preparation. After having pointed out the pleasant relations
that had always existed between Italy and Japan and the present intimate
solidarity, he cited some historic instances which bind the nations in
amity. It was a forebear of the Prince Tokugawa, the Shogun Yasu
Tokugawa, who in 1613 permitted a Western ship to land in Japan, and who
facilitated the advent of the first Japanese ambassador to Rome. The
visitors were apparently very much pleased with his remarks, as he
intended they should be. There was nothing said that seemed to indicate
that there was any general adhesion to the belief that if the Allies won
the war England would become the vassal of America, or of the yellow
people of the extreme Orient, such as the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ has
recently said would probably be the case.
All of the visitors with whom I spoke were loud, and seemingly sincere,
in praise of the treatment they had had at the hands of the Americans
during their visit there, and I gathered that there exists at the
present time between America and Japan a more generalized sentiment of
trustfulness than existed before the war. At least, it may be said that
the Jap loses no opportunity to say "nice things" of our country.
A benefit that flows from such a gathering is the opportunity it gives
to see, in their hour of semi-relaxation and at short range, some of
those who are helping to make history in this country and whose names
one sees every day in the newspapers. The first impression that one gets
is that they are substantial, serious, intelligent, earnest, alert in
their appearance, manner, and conduct, sincere in their efforts, and
unalterable in their determination. I fancy that they compare favorably
with a similar group of any nationality. Though perhaps you are
disappointed in finding that none of them bears any particular outward
manifestations of genius, if there be such thing, yet you have no
misgivings that they are individuals capable of constructive thought and
mature deliberation, self-reliant, and confident.
The next day I went to a midday banquet tendered by Melville E. Stone,
the general manager of the Associated Press, by the newspaper men of
Rome. It was a very different gathering. Newspaper men have a make-up, a
physiognomy, a general appearance, more or less founded in what may be
called personal neglect, that is, an insensitiveness to personal
æsthetics, which is quite characteristic. One can't pick a newspaper man
from a crowd with the same readiness and accuracy that he picks a monk
or an actor, but the majority of journalists become hall-marked after
they have plied their vocation for any considerable length of time. I
was impressed with the appearance of intelligence and seriousness of the
men of the Italian press. Few of them bore the somatic signs of intimacy
with Mr. Barleycorn. The company had a fair sprinkling of ministers,
including Nitti and Gallenga, deputies, and ex-ministers, but as far as
I could see there were no dukes or princes. The latter are ornamental
and not infrequently pleasing to look upon, but a gathering of newspaper
men is redolent of democracy, which is antipathic to princely presence.
We lunched at the restaurant in the Borghese Gardens. It was a much
simpler affair than the banquet tendered the Japs at the Grand Hotel,
but it was an ample, edible lunch, and you had the feeling that we had
foregathered to honor one who was deserving.
When one attempts to describe Mr. Stone he is tempted at once to say he
is a typical American. But what is a typical American? There are so many
types. William Jennings Bryan is a typical American. So is Henry Cabot
Lodge. Benjamin Franklin was a typical American, yet he fraternized with
dukes and flirted with duchesses, the sheer embodiment of _suaviter in
modo_ and _fortiter in re_. While successfully putting America on the
map and advancing the humanities generally, he immortalized himself and
affectioned the French people. Abraham Lincoln, we like to think, was a
typical American, but were one to encounter him incog. in ceremonial
circles, political or social, in Europe to-day, ninety-nine Americans
out of a hundred would deny him. Uncle Sam is supposed to depict the
somatic make-up of the typical Yankee, and at the same time to convey
the idea that he is a man to be reckoned with emotionally and
intellectually at all times, in his moments of relaxation and in his
hours of activity. Nevertheless the average person has something fairly
specific in mind when he says, "He is a typical American." He means a
man who displays and who often can't conceal a determination to put
through that which he has planned; who is self-confident, opinionated, a
stranger to ceremony and oftentimes unfamiliar with ordinary social
amenities; who is fully appreciative of the accomplishments and
potentialities of his country and its institutions, and who doesn't
hesitate to contrast them with those of other countries, often to their
disparagement; who speaks only one language, American, and that not
always either grammatically or elegantly; who is often a stranger to
culture and the last person in the world to find it out; whose dress is
that of a farmer or a fashion-plate, and who has bizarre tastes for food
and drink--cocktails and ice-water bulk large in his necessities, and he
despises Continental breakfasts; who is attracted by the treasures of
art and moved by the beauties of nature, but the immediate result of the
emotion is to enhance the value of something similar in his own country,
yet when he treads his native heath he is often a disparager of it, its
possessions, and its institutions.
Melville E. Stone is not that sort of typical American. His record is
not unlike that of thousands of his countrymen. He is temperamentally
and emotionally an Irishman, and intellectually and physically an
American. The son of an itinerant Methodist preacher who forsook the
cloth for commerce during the Civil War, and was thus able to provide
for the maintenance and education of his children, he gives you the
impression of a man who has made his way in the world, and made his own
way. Although he is now past the age allotted to man by the Psalmist, he
has the appearance and conduct of a man easily ten years younger. I had
opportunity of observing him at short range for three or four days, for
he was our guest, and as all the other members of our household were
away I saw more of him than I otherwise might. He is a man of vast
information, which he is not averse to sharing with others, and, unlike
many who have such possessions, his information is accurate. This, in a
measure, is due to the fact that it is largely personal. As the general
manager and general motivator of the greatest news-collecting bureau in
the world, he is constantly coming in contact with men who are making
history, and his personality is so ingratiating that they allow him a
personal contact which in many instances apparently reaches intimacy.
Although he is a man who talks freely, my impression is that he is not
indiscreet. In addition to this, he has been a studious reader. It was
interesting to find that he is a bed reader, for my belief is that the
man who reads attentively in bed has an impression of what he reads made
upon the memory cells of his brain cortex which sleep then stamps with
permanency.
I gather Mr. Stone had very little schooling; that is, he did not go to
college. As a boy he went to school in the winter and worked in the
summer and during other vacations, and apparently the work that he did
most willingly was newspaper work. He became editor of the Chicago
_Daily News_ while still a very young man, and continued in that
important post for a quarter of a century. He acquired the art of going
easily and successfully to men in political life and other avenues of
constructive activity while in Chicago, Washington, and the capitals of
Europe. The thing that has made him a man of culture, however, is an
inherent desire for knowledge, which, he early realized, is the only
means that man can successfully employ to add to his stature. He is a
true Celt, emotional, sensitive, tenacious of his opinions, reliant in
his judgments, a hater of his enemies, and an admirer of his friends. If
I were asked to enumerate his most distinctive possession, after a short
intimacy with him I should say it was a quality which we speak of as
justice. When he brings a question up to the threshold of his
consciousness for solution, or a problem for decision, the first thing
that he considers is "Is it just?" After that its feasibility and
advisability are discussed.
The representative gathering of Italians which greeted him at lunch were
prejudiced in his favor. In addition to that, they were saturated with
the belief that America was the young Lochinvar who came out of the West
to deliver them from threatened bondage. I doubt very much whether any
one in America to-day realizes the feeling that Italians had for
America, and it is one of great interest. Until the advent of America
into the war Italians practically knew nothing of the United States of
America, save that it was a place to which large numbers of their
poorest and most ignorant inhabitants emigrated, and where they made
money which enabled them to return to their native land, or to maintain
their families or dependents during their exile. Of the history of
America, of the men who made that history and who are making it, of its
institutions, its traditions, its accomplishments, its potentialities
they knew practically nothing. Undoubtedly there are many who would not
accept this statement as true, but I am convinced that it is. Naturally
there are men of culture, men of studious habits, men with inclination
for historic reading who are exceptions to this blanket accusation. I
was very much amused last winter, when dining with an admiral of the
navy on duty at Spezia, by the inquiry whether I came from North America
or from South America. There are many Italians who claim to be educated
who make very little differentiation between the two continents, and I
have never yet met an Italian, unless he was a bookish man, who knew
anything about our literature. In my own profession I doubt that there
are a half-dozen men in America whose fame has reached Italy, and those
whose names are familiar are known because of some eponymic association.
I could cite many examples to show not only the indifference which
Italians have to the history and literature of our country but also the
absence of any desire to know about them. Then, their conceptions or
ideas of Americans are quite extraordinary. They got them from tourists
whom they saw overrunning their country en prince or en Cook, and made
up their minds that they were a type of uncivilized Croesus or of
unæsthetic barbarian. They saw the effete, the effeminate and decadent,
or the semi-invalided business man surrounded by a bevy of overdressed
females whose chief interest seemed to be their luggage and the sights;
and they saw the weary and wearisome gapers constituting the "personally
conducted." Then again, the Italian is no great traveller. He likes his
country, he is content with it, and, although he rails against his
government, he would feel that a large part of the pleasure of life was
taken from him if he were not permitted to discuss critically, and often
disparagingly, what are commonly called politics. I don't mean to say
that the Italian "fancies" himself, but neither the spirit of admiration
nor of emulation distinguishes him. He is like the Roman in miniature.
The Roman still thinks he is the last cry of God's handiwork in the
human line.
When America declared war on Germany, and particularly when she declared
war on Austria, Italians quickly got interested in America; and when
they learned that America came so generously to Italy's aid, first, in
supplying the money for the conduct of the war, and then in supplying
the material needs of her people, Italians manifested a tremendous
interest in us and in our country, and they began to look upon us as
their guide and their savior. I never heard a disparaging word of our
country or of him who was directing our ship of state until after the
Peace Conference. They looked upon Woodrow Wilson as a man inspired.
There were times during the war when they would have been very glad if
America had acquiesced more readily and more whole-heartedly in their
requests, such as in July, 1918, when they believed that it was
imperative to have large numbers of American troops in Italy. But at the
same time, when their wishes were not met and their requests not
granted, they did not sit in adverse judgment upon him who made the
decision. In fact, they believed he could not err.
It is natural that they should have been concerned about the situation
that existed in the early summer of 1918. There were two millions of
American troops in Europe, with more constantly coming, and there were
only a very small number in Italy. The Italians saw themselves pitted
more or less alone against a country, Austria-Hungary, which had an army
nearly twice as large as theirs and which was more rapacious than a
hungry wolf goaded into renewed ferocity by recent defeat. They
sincerely believed that if they had received help at that time they
could have overcome their hereditary and acquired enemy promptly, and it
is likely that they could. That might have been a reason for sending
American troops to Italy, but it was not an adequate reason. The one
task in hand was to win the war, to win it expeditiously and to win it
in such a manner that would put Germany, as she was constituted and as
she had been constituted for the past twenty-five years, out of
existence; that is, to exterminate the war lords, to destroy them and
their influence. The man or men who were permitted to look at the
question from all angles were far better able to plan how this should be
done than the councillors of one nation who naturally saw the question
only from one side, that is, their own point of view.
It is likely also that the Italians constantly reminded themselves that
if they had received help from the Allies early in 1916 the war might
have been ended. I have heard many an Italian say that they were in a
position then to overcome the Austrian army had they received such help
and that with the simultaneous activity of the Russians on the eastern
front they would have carried the Allied arms into Vienna. But you do
not grind your grist more satisfactorily by regretting that the waters
that have gone over the mill were not used more efficaciously.
I have wandered far afield from the testimonial lunch to Mr. Stone, but
my reflections are apropos of the remarks which the Honorable Nitti, a
wizard with figures and a magician with men, made. Many of his
countrymen profess to distrust him and to say that Giolitti made him and
still controls him. Nothing could be more absurd. Nitti is the type of
man who is made by his endowment and by his environment. It would be
easier to think of any other public man in Italy as the tool of a
dictator, dethroned or enthroned, than it would be of Nitti. The son of
poor parents who sacrificed everything for his education, he has been
journalist, author, teacher, economist, professor, advocate, and
statesman. When he first went in the House he sat on the extreme left,
and gradually he moved up toward the centre, although he is always
inscribed in the radical party. He is unquestionably of formidable brain
and combines a will of iron with an audacity that has the appearance at
least of transcending all temerity.
In appearance he is the typical middle-class South Italian, short,
rotund, with thick neck and massive face adorned with a smile that
rarely comes off. He is a polished orator and his political papers read
like literary documents. He is reputed to be a master of political
stage-setting. Realizing that the most potent factor in shaping men's
judgment is the press, and realizing that the man who has his fingers on
the keyboard of the organ that makes the music was the honored guest of
the occasion, he embraced the opportunity to put before Mr. Stone and
his colleagues his convictions of the needs of Italy and his hopes that
they might be gratified. I am sure that he did not say publicly anything
that Mr. Stone had not already heard in private audience, for the doors
leading to the council chambers of the men of influence in this country
swing open welcomingly to Mr. Stone, but to say them in his presence to
the representative press of Italy convinced us that his hopes and
aspirations in this matter were the expression of the government, and he
was willing and wished to communicate them to the public.
The other speakers were entertaining but scarcely instructive. One
doesn't expect inspired sentiment or statement at testimonial banquets,
but I felt that the speakers missed an opportunity to herald the
democratization of the world through education and enlightenment via the
press. Many nice things were said about Mr. Stone, but I confess frankly
that I was disappointed that no one took it upon himself to interpret
his accomplishments or to dwell upon and elaborate his activities and
accomplishments symbolically. If they would stop telling us Germany's
motives in precipitating the Great War and give us instead a credo for
the present and the future, it would be a relief. I am firmly convinced
that Germany thrust the war upon the world because she couldn't inhibit
her latent and active cruelty which possesses and has possessed her for
generations, as lust possesses the satyric man who, when he becomes
intoxicated or unbalanced, throws prudence, precedent, precept, and
principles to the wind and gives himself and his possessions to the
orgy. The Central Powers will have to pay the full penalty for their
crimes, even though they deny their guilt, just as the wilful murderer
is electrocuted, even though he goes to the chair protesting his
innocence.
The guest's speech was felicitous. He dwelt briefly on Italy's
justification for entering the war when she did; he justly evaluated her
work and he paid a deserving tribute to her resourcefulness in having
extricated herself from the horns of the bull after the Caporetto
disaster. He brought Columbus, Mazzini, and Garibaldi, our debt to them
and their inspiration for us, into his remarks in such a way as to
convince his auditors that they constitute for us a revered Italian
trinity, and he adequately depicted the tenderness and affection that
his countrymen have for Italy.
It takes a big man, using that word in one of its conventional senses,
to conduct a successful publicity campaign. In the first place, he has
to understand the people with whom he works, and the first successful
step in understanding them is to want to understand them. If he has
preconceived ideas not founded in reliable information or experience, if
he is biassed and hypercritical, if he doesn't know how to elicit
testimony and evaluate evidence, if he hasn't habituated himself to look
at events, heralded or transpired, from different points of view, if he
isn't animated by the spirit of service--that is, to do his work for the
good of the cause--he is doomed to failure, or at least he can be only
partially successful. Then again, he must be a man who worthily
represents his government and his people. He should know his way about.
He should be familiar with ordinary social amenities, so that he may go
easily amongst his superiors and excite their approbation, and he must
have the capacity to bear true witness while constantly keeping the
burnished side of his shield before the people he is aiming to succor
and orient. There are few ways in which one can be of more service to
his country than by making proper propaganda in an allied country. The
narrow-minded, biassed, obsessed man has the worst possible equipment
for such position.
Propaganda is the priceless privilege of the press.