When Will Rogers, the funny man, departed on a great liner to tour Europe, the press took note of his sailing. His arrival, also, was duly recorded. Then a series of excited despatches informed the public whom he met and where he dined; a witticism dropped in a taxicab to an Associated Press reporter was cabled to all the English-speaking world; last week the wires crepitated with the announcement that he had started for Poland to be rude to Marshal Pilsudski. And suddenly a full page advertisement in the leading papers throughout the U. S. heralded the LETTERS OF A SELF MADE DIPLOMAT TO HIS PRESIDENT. A Collection of the Intimate Papers and Letters That is Changing Hands during these Perilous Times of Peace between Our President and his Ambassador — Without P o r t-folio—Will Rogers
It was an advertisement, of course, for the Saturday Evening Post. Readers ascertained on closer scrutiny that Mr. Rogers was permitting this journal to publish a series of open epistles indited by him to Calvin Coolidge. He had never, he declared, talked to the President. Indeed, the first letter began with an apology. Mr. Rogers was sorry that on his recent visit to Washington he had not called at the White House. He had been too busy. Then, too, he was not sure that the President had any servants; the visit might have been an embarrassment. So he contented himself with giving Mr. Coolidge a graphic survey of the political perils of the times.
Careless readers, puzzled by the misleading spread, thought for an incredulous moment that this prairie pantaloon had actually wriggled into government service— then they saw their mistake, and laughed, and showed the spread to their friends just as the Curtis Publishing Co. had hoped they would. But, in actual fact, the blurb was not so silly as it seemed. Ambassador! Mr. Rogers is just that.
"Ambassador of the United States to Europe—without Portfolio"—a curious title for a joke-smith. The braided butler of the consular drawing-room chants it through his thorax, scorching the sibilants, booming the o's. The company stares at the newcomer. Famous women turn, over ivory shoulders, a glance cool with appraisal; gentlemen in dinner shirts striped with impossible decorations raise their monocles or feel for their small arms while he shambles into the room—"Viva, l'Ambassadeur." He wears an old grey suit. A jazbo necktie adorns, but fails to hide, the golden collar-stud. His shoes, surely, have never been denied by polish. See how he bows right and left, this gangling fellow, as lean as a lariat, in the old suit and the cracked shoes. His under lip protrudes like the point of a vulgar joke. His jaws move perpetually, up and down, chewing insult, chewing fancy, chewing humor, chewing gum. It is William Penn Adair Rogers, the diplomatist.