Tobacco in Diplomacy
The “herb of peace” has played an important rôle in politics and diplomacy during the last two hundred years in the history of the world, and its influence upon the course of public events has been almost invariably of a beneficial character. Not only have its narcotic properties tended to soothe the angry passions of those intrusted with the conduct of international relations, but it has also afforded them the opportunity of thinking before they spoke, and allowed time for those second thoughts which in statecraft, at any rate, are always best. People are often disposed to make fun of the so-called “pipe of peace” and to regard it as a mere form of speech originating with the red Indians. But tobacco, whether taken in the form of a pipe, a cigar, a cigarette or snuff, has proved a powerful and effective aid to peace, and as such its use deserves to be fostered and propagated by all patriotic and law-abiding citizens, in lieu of being condemned as noxious. The value placed by people in the eighteenth century and in the early part of the nineteenth upon snuff as a preventive of violence is shown by the German historian Jacoby, who, writing of his times, declares: “Whenever any one displays signs of temper the snuff-box is handed to him, and we all have too much self-control, even under the most trying circumstances, ever to resist the power.”
Even women in those days who did not take snuff kept boxes for the purpose of averting quarrels among their admirers, and it was universally regarded as one of the most efficacious aids to the maintenance of friendly and agreeable intercourse. Nowadays snuff has gone out of fashion, and, as a rule, cigarettes have supplanted tobacco in its powdered form in what has been described as “diplomatic machinery.” The statesman or the ambassador who could formerly conceal his embarrassment and collect his thoughts for an appropriate answer during the slow and stately process of taking a “prise,” is now enabled to do so while breathing out nicely distanced rings of fragrant Turkish tobacco. Indeed, the cigarette proves perhaps a more effective ally in a moment of difficulty than the pinch of snuff. For whereas you cannot indefinitely prolong the process of inhaling the latter, it is always possible to gain time with a cigarette by letting it go out and then having to relight it. To-day there is scarcely any foreign minister or diplomat who is not provided with his cigarette-box, which he regards, not in the light of an object of personal luxury, but as part and parcel of the most indispensable paraphernalia of his office. It is worthy of note that the Russians, who devote more attention and importance to the study of diplomacy than any other Western nation, are always provided with finer cigarettes than any of their foreign colleagues, while one of the reasons why the late Khedive was subject to so much bullying and badgering by the various ministers and consuls accredited to his court was because his cigarettes were so execrable that it required the strongest dose of courtesy possible to make even a pretence of smoking them, the result being that he had to bear the full brunt of every disagreeable first thought that came into the mind of his foreign visitors, his cigarettes offering no inducement for them to reflect before speaking, and tending, moreover, to irritate rather than to soothe their tempers.
It is a peculiar fact that all women who have achieved fame in diplomacy, such as Princess Pauline Metternich, Princess Lise Troubetskoi, the late Princess Leopold Croy, Mme. de Novikoff, etc., have all been inveterate consumers of cigarettes, and each of those just mentioned has availed herself with signal advantage of the opportunity afforded by toying with a fragrant papilletto to reflect before speaking, which women, as a rule, alas! so seldom do. Apparently it is with the hope of encouraging women who are not, like Mme. de Novikoff and Princess Lise Troubetskoi, professed diplomats, to think before speaking, and thereby avert a goodly portion of the trouble which befalls man, that several of the governments of Continental Europe are encouraging the use of tobacco among the fair sex by providing smoking apartments for women on all the state railroads. And we even find that solemn and august functionary, the Speaker of the British House of Commons, the living embodiment of all that is most time-honored, old-fashioned, and ultra-respectable in the English Parliament, turning a deaf ear to the protest raised of late years in certain of the London newspapers against the now frequent spectacle offered on summer nights of women in full evening dress sitting out on the riverside terrace of the palace of Westminster puffing at their post-prandial cigarette. “The First Commoner of the Realm” is, like his predecessor, Lord Peel, apparently of the opinion that the weed, first dedicated to England’s “Virgin Queen,” is infinitely more effective and less injurious to high-strung feminine nerves than chloral, morphine or alcohol. The easiest-tempered and most tractable women of the universe are those of the Orient, who smoke all day long, and the same may be said of the women of Southern Europe. With the exception of the present Czarina of Russia, Queen Alexandra, and the Queen of the Netherlands, nearly all the women of the reigning houses of the Old World smoke.