Beer Diplomacy

To Riga, Latvia, came, some three months ago, Herr Doktor Adolph Koester, German Ambassador, lusty beerbibber. . . .

He found official Latvia strongly disposed to favor the Franco-British project of a Baltic state cordon dividing Russia and Germany. Poland, close ally of France, had bestowed numerous decorations on Latvian officials. At Riga British diplomats were arbitri elegantiarum How should the German Ambassador win Latvian sympathies?

Soon Herr Doktor Koester gave a true, orthodox German bier abend: a "beer evening" at which he and a group of high Latvian officials sat up with mossy kegs of beer till dawn. Sweet sentiment, and plaintive songs crowned the bier abend at sunrise. The Latvians went home, touched at the harmony of soul and taste existing between themselves and the Germans. Soon a great many bier abends were given: at Riga. When invited, British diplomats proved inadept at sentimental songs, lacking in capacity for beer, cold flats in the mellow golden harmony. . . .

Last week correspondents cabled from Riga that official Latvia has unquestionably become offish to the Franco-British scheme for a cordon sanitaire from Poland to the Gulf of Finland. The correspondents may have been too ready to attribute great events to trivial liquids, but they attributed the Latvian diplomatic shift to "beer diplomacy."