Eating dinners is a peculiar custom of the English which has great significance. At Oxford a man's first duty is to "keep term," without which, work as he may, he cannot possibly obtain a degree. "Keeping term," brought down to its final analysis, consists in eating a given number of dinners at his college. In London, a law student at the Inns of Court must, if he ever hopes to become a barrister, eat at least three dinners in the hall of his particular Inn. Thus, by the lime a politician has been through Oxford and becomes a barrister-at-law, dinner-eating has become a firmly fixed habit. Small wonder that British statesmen make such great use of banquets to deliver even the most important of their speeches.
U.S. Ambassadors are early introduced to this quaint English custom. It is now a part of the London Ambassador's duty to eat dinner with the Pilgrims on his arrival and again on his departure.
So the day came around when Frank B. Kellogg, U.S. Secretary of State designate, but still functioning as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, sat down with the Prince of Wales, Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston S. Churchill, the veteran ex-Premier and statesman Lord Balfour and a goodly sprinkling of Cabinet Ministers and foreign Ambassadors. The Pilgrims were giving Mr. Kellogg the usual send-off dinner.
Winston ("Winnie") Churchill, assuredly the superlatively coruscating member of Mr. Baldwin's Ministry, rose to propose Mr. Kellogg's health, a seemingly inevitable preliminary which permits the speaker to descant upon other matters. Referring to the honored guest, Mr. Churchill said:
"What he thinks of us is more important than what we think of him. I hope, first of all, that Mr. Kellogg will tell his fellow citizens that the British people are people of a true democracy—that any Government of this country rests on popular will."
Then, with rather poor taste—a failing of the Marlboroughs—he read the menu, gloated pseudo-maliciously over the fact that cocktails went with hors d'oeuvres, sherry with the soup, sauterne with the fish, red wine with the entree, champagne with the chicken, port for toasts to the King and President, brandy with the coffee.
As all speakers must, the Chancellor spoke of the Washington Arms Conference and went on to speak "with obvious pride" of the British Navy. Of the former he said in part:
"I don't underrate the greatness of the sacrifice of tradition or the immense change in public policy which this agreement involves, so far as this country is concerned. There is no comparison between the positions of this crowded island, dependent for four-fifths of the food it eats on supplies from other parts of the globe, and the vast continent which is self-contained in every respect."