Embassy

“ Ambassadors, whatever be their sort, because of the dignity of an embassy, enjoy much honor. For observe; they go alone into the heart of the land of barbarians, through the midst of so many enemies; and because the law of embassy is of mighty power, all honor them; all look towards them with respect, all send them forth with safety. And we now have received a word of embassy, and we are come from God, for this is the dignity of the Episcopate. ”

“ The Paris newspapers seem highly pleased at this "strong diplomatic manifestation"—the American Ambassador of yesterday, the American Ambassador of today, and the American Ambassador of tomorrow —constituting a delegation from the United States to see that the rights of universal humanity are respected. Parisians salute the Star Spangled Banner as it floats over the American Embassy as the symbol of the "World's Vigilance against Barbarity,"—such are the words of La Liberté. ”

“ The Embassy is humming with people calling, [Pg 166] making inquiries, asking for passports, demanding everything from a room in the best hotel to a good store where an American can buy a pair of suspenders, and a thousand and one other requests. ”

“ The result of my observation in Europe during ten years of pretty active service is this: that while there should be a permanent officer in every embassy—a chancellier, as he is called in Paris—who can turn promptly to any page of the archives, and is posted in the history of the relations of the country in which he resides with his own; who knows the court ceremonial, and is intimate with the court officials; in short, "who knows the ropes"—it is quite as well that the head of the embassy should be a new man. ”

“ This was no light task, as our Embassy was looking after the affairs of the English, French and Russians along with its own. A number of college boys waiting to be returned home had offered their services and were assisting the clerks in their work. Our Embassy had been so overburdened with work that Mrs. Gerard was there all day long helping her husband. This work included giving out of passports, the [Pg 59] O. K.-ing of passports, selling of tickets on special trains and the giving out of money to stranded Americans. ”

“ Our embassy was crowded from morning to night with hundreds of citizens, most of whom wanted to make application for passports, for the steamship companies required the exhibition of passports before arranging for transportation. The rooms at the embassy were not large enough to accommodate the crowds that filled them, so we transferred the passport division to the Hotel Savoy, and Ambassador Page assigned to me several clerks to facilitate the handling of our business. ”

“ It is all aboveboard and it is all done by men of high honour and good character—I mean the Embassy staff. Counting the attachés there are about twenty good men, every one of whom moves in a somewhat different circle from any other one. Every one cultivates his group of English folk, in and out of official life, and his group in the diplomatic corps. There isn't a week but every man of them sees his particular sources of information—at their offices, at the Embassy, at luncheon, at dinner, at the clubs—everywhere. We all take every possible occasion to serve our friends and they serve us. ”

“ An embassy could proceed more quietly from place to place than a monarch traveling in his own name; and then besides, if the emperor occupied only a subordinate place in the train of the embassy, he could slip away from it to pursue his own inquiries in a private manner whenever he pleased, leaving the embassadors themselves and those of their train who enjoyed such scenes to go through all the public receptions and other pompous formalities which would have been so tiresome to him. ”

“ After service as Councillor of Embassy in Berlin, Washington and Paris, I was appointed by the late King Edward his Envoy extraordinaire et Ministre plénipotentiaire to a certain brilliant Court in the South of Europe, where I still reside in the great white Embassy as chief of a large and brilliant staff.
Sometimes when I go on leave, I manage to snatch a week or two with Count Drury and his pretty wife, at the Grand Ducal Palace in Petersburg, where they live together in perfect idyllic happiness, and where splendid receptions are given during the winter season. ”

“ English soldiers salute our officers in the street and old gentlemen take off their hats when they meet nurses with the American Red Cross uniform. My Embassy now occupies four buildings for offices, more than half of them military and naval. And my own staff, proper, is the biggest in the world and keeps growing. ”

“ The English colony had mustered in full force, and there was a big gathering of French friends as well. The footpaths close to the Embassy and along the street leading to the Church were crammed with well-dressed people—the fair sex being strongly represented; and there they stood in the brilliant sunshine, but bitterly cold wind, waiting for their Majesties to pass. The King and Queen drove to and from the Church in one of the Ambassador’s carriages, and with Sir Francis Bertie and members of their suite were conducted to the Embassy Gallery. ”

“ The American Embassy was three blocks beyond the Presidencia. Hall wanted to walk to the party, but when he reached the street he became self-conscious about his palm-beach tuxedo jacket, and he hailed a strange cab.
The Embassy was housed in an old Spanish palace which a former Ambassador had left to the United States Government in his will. After the first World War, when the government had taken title to the palace, Washington sent an architect and an office efficiency man to San Hermano to redesign the structure. The outside remained more or less intact. ”

“ Though the big American bar was crowded by men, in the corner where they sat upon a red plush settee they could not be overheard, the chatter and noise being so great. “We at the Embassies are only puppets, after all. It is such men as you who shape the nation’s policy. We’re simply the survival of the old days when kings exchanged courtesies and views by means of their ambassadors, and we, the frills of the Embassy, merely dress up, dance attendance at every function, and pretend to an importance in the world which we certainly do not possess.” ”

“ In 1909 we celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the discovery by Champlain of the great lake with which his name is forever linked.
To-night, in the name and on behalf of the President of the United States, I welcome the Embassy from the French people that brings to the American people a token of the perpetual friendship which an indissoluble union in the past makes sure of continuance in the future.
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No more distinguished or representative Embassy has ever come bearing the greetings of one people to another. ”

“ The British Embassy, in those days, was a centre where you were sure to find all the English gentlemen in Paris collected, from time to time. Dinners, balls, and receptions, were given with profusion throughout the season: in fact, Sir Charles spent the whole of his private income in these noble hospitalities. England was then represented, as it always should be in France, by an ambassador who worthily expressed the intelligence, the amiability, and the wealth, of the great country to which he belonged. At the present day, the British Embassy emulates the solitude of a monastic establishment ”

“ I believe that my experience is not a singular one; but from the moment that I announced myself as a person claiming the aid of the “Mission,” the doors of the Embassy were hermetically sealed against me. If I called, “His Excellency” (everything is Excellency to an embassy porter) was either in conference with a colleague, or replying to a despatch, or with the court. If I wrote, my answer was always a polite acknowledgment of my note, and no more. Even when we met passingly in the street, his salute was cold and markedly distant ”

“ No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall send an embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance, or treaty, with any king, prince, or State; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States or any of them, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign State; nor shall the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility. ”

“ They know when to be silent, too; and they [pg II-417] are trusted as they deserve to be. Of course I see them, singly or in pairs, every day in the regular conduct of the work of the Embassy; and once a week we all meet together and go over everything that properly comes before so large a "cabinet" meeting. Thus some of us are on confidential terms with somebody in every department of the Government, with somebody in every other Embassy and Legation, with all the newspapers and correspondents—even with the censors. And the wives of those that are married are abler than their husbands. ”

“ We offer up our fervent prayers to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for the success of their embassy, and that it may be productive of peace and happiness to our common country. The uniform tenor of your conduct through a life useful to your fellow-citizens and honorable to yourself gives a sure pledge of the sincerity with which the avowed objects of the negotiation will be pursued on your part, and we earnestly pray that similar dispositions may be displayed on the part of France. ”

“ As for the men of the Embassy, from the Ambassador down to "Wilhelm," the old German doorkeeper who has initiated two generations of American diplomats into the mysteries of their profession in Berlin, no faithful servants of an ungrateful Republic ever came so valiantly to the rescue of fellow taxpayers. The Embassy apartments, including the Ambassador's own sanctuary, were turned into offices which looked for all the world like a Census Bureau. ”

“ The American Embassy here will at the given moment receive a Note in which the American Government will be requested to communicate our peace offer to those of our enemies with whom they represent our interests. Our other enemies will be informed through the medium of Switzerland and Spain respectively. ”

“ I{60} always think of this ambassadorial group going down those stone steps to the church, to pay their respect to the Archduke, and then going up to the gaily decorated American Embassy, to pay their respect to the Declaration of Independence. All the station ships of the foreign countries lay out in the stream, decorated and dressed in honour of our national holiday, and the ambassadors and ministers called in full regalia. ”

“ The existing Russian embassy was the Polish embassy. The Dutch and the Swedes acquired pleasant properties on the same slope. All these big gateways and gardens opening off the Grande Rue give colour to another theory for the Turkish name of Pera—that it was originally Bey Yolou, or the Street of Grandees.
The British embassy is by no means so young a member [174] of this venerable diplomatic colony as our own, but its early traditions are of a special order. They are bound up with the history of the Levant Company. ”

“ Before this I had not seen any embassy from a Christian king, and now you are near to me, before all were Pagans and Moors, dirty sons of Mahomed, and others are slaves who do not know God; and others pay reverence to sticks and to fire, and others to the sun, and others to serpents: and there are great differences. ”

“ Legation, or embassy, formerly meant the particular business, the errand, so to speak, upon which the ambassador was sent.
These terms are now used more often to designate the officers themselves who are sent on an embassy, and finally by the extension of the term they also mean the official residence of those officers.
American legations as a rule have fewer members than those of other great nations and are much less expensive. The American 126diplomatic service costs only one fourth as much as the British. Whether or not the result is desirable upon the whole you may judge for yourselves ”

“ Should Congress ever persuade itself that diplomatic dignity is a thing worthy to be upheld, or should some sultan present us with one of the old estates still available, I hope we shall build an embassy, like the one the French occupied so long, in keeping with its surroundings and not such a monstrosity as other Powers have put up. ”

“ On returning to Paris the ambassadors, in presence of the king’s council and a numerous assembly of clergy, nobility, and people, gave an account of their embassy and advised instant preparation for war without listening to a single word of peace. ”

“ The ambassador must take care to protect the interests of all his master;s subjects, both in such matters as the free exercise of their religion, in which he should even offer his embassy as an asylum for those who are persecuted, and in other matters, acting as a mediator between his fellow-countrymen on occasions of dispute. ”

“ If it is thought necessary by the nation going to war, to solicit the alliance of any neighbouring tribe, they fix upon one of their chiefs who speaks the language of that people well, and who is a good orator, and send to them by him a belt of wampum, on which is specified the purport of the embassy in figures that every nation is well acquainted with. ”