Diplomatic drinking in prohibition America
1929
The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in January 1919 and coming into effect in January 1920, prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation and exportation of alcohol within the country, and, it was hoped, marked the beginning of a ‘dry’ era for the American people. The reality on the ground, however, failed to match legislative ambitions. With bootlegging becoming a popular pastime and speakeasies flourishing, the irony was that alcohol came to define the period that tried to ban it.
This letter, written by James T Carter of Lynchburg, Virginia on 18 April 1929, is a product of this gulf between the ideal and the reality, and takes aim at an unexpected target, the British Embassy. Carter addresses the awkward point that, while border crossings were patrolled and warehouses raided across the country, the British ambassador and addressee Sir Esme Howard was free to sip whisky in the nation’s capital behind a veil of diplomatic immunity. His is perhaps not the most reasoned of arguments, relying upon emotional blackmail with its references to the US’s ‘enormous sacrifice’ and ‘immense service’ during the First World War, but it seemed to strike a chord with Howard who felt moved enough to offer a reply.
Unfortunately for Howard, his reply, issued through his private secretary a week later, was a little too honest. Although stressing the nature of his immunity and the law as it stood, he said that he’d be happy to abide by the law if it was changed in this matter, an offer that implicitly placed responsibility for the situation with the White House. Carter, sensing an opportunity, forwarded this letter to President Hoover on 14 May, quoting Howard’s offer before saying: ‘I judge from this that you can help make Washington a model city so far as whiskey drinking is concerned’. With no reply forthcoming, Carter went to the press with the ambassador’s comments.
Howard soon faced ire from all sides. Hoover was angered by the ammunition it gave an already powerful ‘dry’ lobby, potentially forcing his hand in delicate matters of diplomacy. Other embassies worried about the implications for diplomatic immunity or, at the very least, their drinks cabinets. The British Foreign Office, meanwhile, stood to pick up the flak for an unauthorised announcement by one of their own. Howard had, through his fairly innocuous words, created what The Times called a ‘flurry in the capital, which can be created by nothing so promptly and so acutely as by the public discussion of some aspect of the prohibition question’.
Attempts to control the story began immediately, with Howard issuing a statement to the press that made it clear he spoke only for himself, not for the British government as a whole, nor for the diplomatic community in Washington DC. Howard then met with the Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, and further reiterated that he spoke on a personal basis. However, rather than stopping there, Howard promised Stimson that he would no longer be importing alcohol for his own use, citing his own unease at the situation. He told Stimson of the ‘sword of Damocles’ he felt hanging above his head, and his fear that ‘some day some American guest may be seen issuing forth from the embassy … in a state of intoxication’. His employers were unimpressed, with the Foreign Office questioning the idea of having a ‘dry’ ambassador ‘representing a country which is not so and in the company of 54 colleagues all of whom import liquor’, and noting Howard’s over-sensitivity to attacks from the ‘dry’ lobby.
With this confused, half-hearted response, it’s little surprise that attacks continued against the immunity enjoyed by diplomats. In June 1929, Senator Carraway of Arkansas submitted a successful resolution to the Senate, which called for the publication of a list of diplomats caught driving while intoxicated during the previous 13 years. The resulting list of 35 people was quickly picked up by the press before it was realised that the list covered all driving offences, not just those involving alcohol. As such, the only ambassador on the list, the German von Prittwitz, faced the wrath of the press for little more than a minor parking offence.
The hysteria generated by diplomatic drinking, and fuelled by comments such as Howard’s, would only end with prohibition itself. The Twenty-first Amendment was ratified in December 1933, which in turn repealed the Eighteenth. What Hoover had termed the ‘noble experiment’ was over.
