CHAPTER XL

JOHN HAY ON DIPLOMACY

CLEVELAND'S SECOND ELECTION-LORD HERSCHELL A GUESTLETTER FROM PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT

1892-1902

THE Comprehensive character of these annual gatherings was shown in the guests at the banquet of November 15, 1892, only a few days after the national election in which Mr. Cleveland was a second time chosen President. He was the chief guest of honor, and among the others were two members of President Harrison's Cabinet, Charles Foster, Secretary of the Treasury, and W. H. H. Miller, Attorney-General; and Whitelaw Reid, defeated candidate for the vice-presidency. Mr. Cleveland, in a few words thanking the Chamber for courtesies so often extended, said: "I beg to assure you that though I may not soon meet you again on an occasion like this, I shall remember with peculiar pleasure the friends made among your membership, and shall never allow myself to be heedless of the affairs you so worthily hold in your keeping."

A special banquet was given by the Chamber on April 28, 1893, to the officers of the United States and foreign war-ships that had escorted the Spanish caravels to the harbor of New York for exhibition in the Columbus Centennial Exposition in Chicago. Four hundred persons were present.

Coming closely upon the first defeat of the free-silver candidate for the presidency, the banquet of November 17, 1896, assumed the air of a jubilee in which everybody congratulated everybody else. Among the guests were William L. Wilson, Postmaster-General, and John W. Griggs, Governor of New Jersey and later Attorney-General of the United States. In

his speech, Governor Griggs paid a cordial tribute to the Chamber, saying: "I cannot let this opportunity pass without referring to the great work which this Chamber has wrought for the State and city whose name it bears, and for the country at large. It is a long interval since these dinners were held at Fraunces's Tavern, but during all that period this institution has stood as the pilot, the guide, the director, the pioneer in all wise policies of commerce and trade and patriotism. You have bestowed not only wisdom and enlightenment and courage on the world of commerce, but millions of dollars upon the unfortunate victims of fire and flood and fever. You have been the promoters of good fortune, and the comforters of misfortune. I wish that the people of this land could understand how much true and loyal patriotism, how much disinterested devotion to the highest interests of the country, are found among just such men as compose the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York."

The Right Honorable Lord Herschell, formerly Lord Chancellor of England, who was in the United States as president of the Joint High Commission that was negotiating a settlement of the Alaska boundary question, was the guest of honor in 1898. In his speech, which was heard with pleasure, Lord Herschell said that there was to him a peculiar interest in the fact that he, who had had the honor to fill the office of Lord Chancellor, should be present as the representative of his country engaged in negotiations between Great Britain and the United States. A century and a quarter ago or more, a predecessor of his in that high office had made a most unfortunately foolish prediction had said, with reference to the American Colonies of that time, that if they withdraw their allegiance we shall withdraw our protection, and then they will soon be overrun by the little States of Genoa and San Marino. "I could not help thinking of those words when I reflected that I was here negotiating with the representatives of a mighty nation of seventy millions of people who have not

been overrun by the little Republics of Genoa and San Marino, although, undoubtedly, in a sense very different from that which the speaker intended, you may have been overrun by the natives of some of the Italian towns."

The shadow of President McKinley's tragic death was upon the annual banquet in 1901, and its distinguishing feature was an address by John Hay, Secretary of State. Secretary Hay began his remarks with a touchingly beautiful tribute to the dead President, saying that when the latter lay stricken at Buffalo he had asked him to take his place at the banquet. "This," said the Secretary, "I had sometimes done in his lifetime, though always with diffidence and dread, but how much more am I daunted by the duty of appearing before you when that great man, loved and revered above all even while living, has put on the august halo of immortality. Who could worthily come into your presence as the shadow of that illustrious Shade?"

Turning later to the subject of "Our Diplomacy" upon which he had been requested to speak, the Secretary alluded to those persons in whose minds diplomacy was considered "an occult science as mysterious as alchemy and as dangerous to the morals as municipal politics," and said: "There was a time when diplomacy was a science of intrigue and falsehood, or traps and mines and countermines. The word 'machiavelic' has become an adjective in our common speech, signifying fraudulent craft and guile; but Machiavel was as honest a man as his time justified or required. The King of Spain wrote to the King of France after the massacre of St. Bartholomew congratulating him upon the splendid dissimulation with which that stroke of policy had been accomplished. In the last generation it was thought a remarkable advance and straightforward policy when Prince Bismarck recognized the advantage of telling the truth even at the risk of misleading his adversary."

Having himself been a diplomat, and a most successful one

for many years, what the Secretary had to say about diplomatic representatives was especially interesting: "There are two important lines of human endeavor in which men are forbidden even to allude to their success-affairs of the heart and diplomatic affairs. In doing so one not only commits a vulgarity which transcends all questions of taste, but makes all future success impossible. For this reason the diplomatic representatives of the government must frequently suffer in silence the most outrageous imputations upon their patriotism, their intelligence, and their common honesty. To justify themselves before the public they would sometimes have to place in jeopardy the interests of the nation. They must constantly adopt for themselves the motto of the French Revolutionist, 'Let my name wither rather than my country be injured.""

Finally, coming to a definition of our diplomacy, he aroused great applause by saying: "The attitude of our diplomacy may be indicated in a text of Scripture which Franklin, the first and greatest of our diplomatists, tells us passed through his mind when he was presented at the Court of Versailles. It was a text his father used to quote to him in the old candleshop in Boston when he was a boy: 'Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand before kings.' Let us be diligent in our business, and we shall stand-stand, you see, not crawl nor swagger-stand, as a friend and equal, asking nothing, putting up with nothing but what is right and just among our peers in the great democracy of nations."

President Roosevelt was invited to attend the annual banquet in 1902, but was unable to accept. In a letter of regret he paid this tribute to the Chamber and its influence in the land:

The Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York occupies a unique position. It is distinguished not only by its long history but by the vast importance of the business interests which it represents, but also for the high type of public and business morality

which it represents. I pay you no idle compliment. The record of the men you have chosen as presidents; the record of the causes with which the Chamber of Commerce has from time to time been identified; and above all the standard of business integrity which the Chamber of Commerce has consistently represented, and which it has demanded among those for whom it has in any way stood sponsor, shows the truth of what I say. It is surely unnecessary to add that no body of men can render a greater service, not only to the American business world but to the American body politic, than has thus been rendered by the Chamber of Commerce.