The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1893-01-22

succeed Niebuhr. In Andrew Dickson
White of Cornell University, who was
chosen to step into the shoes CT Bayard
Taylor, the cultured society OF Berlin, as
apart from the court society. welcomed
minister who was more of historian
than of diplomatist, though at the same
time very good and snrewd dlplomatlst,
and who believed, like his predecessor,
that the best way of obviating misunder-
standings and disputes between two kin
dred peoples was to provide them with
the means of knowing each other better.
AARON SARGENT.
AT Berlin he was succeeded by Aaron
Sargent. a lawyer from one of the west
ern states, who did not pretend to be a
link in the chain OF tradition which be-
gan with Bancroft and was continued by
Bayard Taylor and Andrew Dickson
White. Mr.. Sargent had more natural
affinity with politicians than with poets,
and in the sensitive court atmosphere of
the German capital this was a decided sin.
He had never been abroad before, and
was sadly deficient in many of the quail
ties which enable man to hold his feet
in the very slippery and treacherous field
of diplomacy In Berlin MIR. Sargent con-
tinued to be more of the politician than
the diplomatist and made bold to
associate himself rather prominently
with the radical and opposition elements
in the German capital. This, of course,
meant the closing OF all the doors OF grace
against him at the foreign office, where
the resentful Bismarck ruled supreme:
and when the "pig flesh question: broke
out afresh between Washington and Ber-
lin, the German chancellor used it as a
means OF ousting minister who had
ceased to be persona grata IN the VIII
helm Strasse The chancellor's organ in
f... fl,f
American minister such as never before
had been applied to any member OF
a body supposed to enjoy absolute i'm
munity from personal attack; and, to
crown all, Mr.. Sargant was one day re-
uuested from Washington to go to the
German foreign Office and Withdraw a
statement which he had ventured to make
TO Count Hatzfeldt on his own RESPONSE
bility, and which tthe count had inter-
preted in a very offensive sense. After
this the only course open TO Mr.. Sargent
was TO return home with doubtful repu-
ton as diplomat; though with high
and unblemished character as a man.
JOHN A. KAssoN.
The honors and the duties of his Office
then devolved on John A. Kasson, a man
who already had some considerable
training as a dipIomatist, and who had
learned among the embassies and bureaus
of Vienna how to comport himself at the
conference tables and on the slippery
parquet floors OF Berlin, A subtle, suave,
silent and discreet minister was Mr.. Kas-
son. with turn for precise, almost ped
antic delivery of his thoughts, and fine
talent at once for eliciting a secret or baf-
fling an interviewer. A man of refined
and cultured presence, too, with an aris-
tocratic tincture of French or Huguenot
descent about him, but man also of
rather delicate health, which compelled
him to live very carefully, and to be cir
cumspect in the choice of his boon COM
panions. Everywhere in Berlin society
Mr.. Kasson was bien Uu, though, as a
bachelor, it was not incumbent upon