Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1898 — The Cigarette In Diplomacy. [ARTICLE]

The Cigarette In Diplomacy.

An attache of one of the legations in Washington said to me the other day: “Diplomacy couldn’t get along without the cigarette. For hundreds of years ambassadors used the snuff box as a discourager of impulsiveness and temper. You.can’t think of Talleyrand, for instance, without his jprecious snuff box. Recall the paintings and prints of the picturesque old fellow; he. seemed to be always offering a pinch of snuff to some other smirking chap. When passions became strained, or things that ought not to be said were likely to be forced out by a sly remark of one’s adversary, or a nunexpected situation developed, the passing of snuff always gained time. The cigarette does the same business now. The cigar is too hig and too heavy for many men, but the cigarette is dainty and harmless, and if ft does anything, it steadies the nerve for the time. It is a graceful thing to offer; braflfords a chance for a polite smile; it helps a fellow to get an impassive face; anu most of all it makes him careful in speech. Why the world never will know how often even war has been averted by the cigarette. There is always a war of diplomats before the open war of nations, and that little roll of tobacco has again and again during the last ten years been a spell of peace among ambassadors when irritation had got the better of them and any moment might hear the Irrevocable words which would precipitate war. All the sensitiveness of a whole nation is sometimes tingling in the person of its one ambassador during a critical interview, and I could tell you strange stories, wei’e I at liberty, which I have gathered among the diplomatic corps of various capitals of how international anger has beep soothed by the smoke of a cigarette.”— Illustrated American. >