Daniele Varè
Birthday in Berlin
First chapter of: Laughing Diplomat, 1938.

t had snowed overnight. Through a window of the Small Café, we looked out at the snow and the snow-covered tables and chairs on the terrace. It was warm inside, with a fire burning in the fireplace in the corner.

Beer or wine? Two friends joined me and said mulled wine was the best.

One of them, who had recently rearranged and organized his extensive library and come across books he wanted to read again, remarked thoughtfully:

"The snow reminds me of the opening chapter of a book by Daniele Varè, his memoirs. Today, hardly anyone knows this Italian diplomat, but eighty or ninety years ago, his books were bestsellers in Europe. In the first chapter of The Laughing Diplomat, it is also snowing — in Berlin in January 1900.

"And it is a little like today. After decades of peace, political rise, and flourishing prosperity, Talleyrand's grandniece paints a picture of a coming war. Some people, though few, can learn from history.

"Today, the lust for war is back. When a new war breaks out, the end is immediately clear. A few have made a lot of money; the rest of the people are left with nothing. Thousands have died. For nothing. Total senselessness."

He looked as if he knew. I believed him.

Daniele Varè (12 January 1880 — 27 February 1956), the Italian dip­lo­mat whom first we see in his memoires celebrating his twen­tieth birthday in 1900 in Berlin, dining in high dip­lo­ma­tic society and then driving to the 'house of the three mu­si­cians' where Joachim, one of its inhabitants and teacher of his own teacher, Markees, was playing quartets. That evening he decided that it was better to be a competent diplomat than a merely, or even highly, competent musician — a fact which gives the mea­sure both of his inclinations and his good sense.

Varè was an Italian diplomat and author. Varè's father, Giovanni Battista Varè was a lawyer and politician. He was exiled from northern Italy by the then Austrian authorities. His mother, Elizabeth Frances Chalmers, was Scottish. Varè spent his early years in Britain, returning to Italy with his mother at the age of eleven. He entered the Italian Diplomatic Service in 1907 and was first assigned to China in 1912. In 1909 he married Elizabeth Bettina Chalmers. He returned as Italian Ambassador to the Republican Government in China between 1927 and 1931. In Beijing he had as a sub­or­di­nate Galeazzo Ciano (later to become Benito Mussolini's Minister of Foreign Affairs). He also served at the League of Nations, in Luxembourg, Denmark and Iceland. In 1932, while serving as Ambassador to Denmark, he was forced to resign by the Fascist Regime as many other Italian Diplomats. He originally published his memoires Laughing Diplomat in English and only later in Italian. →

Daniele Varè: Laughing Diplomat. London: John Murray. 1938.
Daniele Varè: Der Lachende Diplomat. Wien: Paul Zsolnay Verlag AG. 1938.
Daniele Varè: Il diplomatico sorridente: 1900-1940. Milano: Mondadori. 1941.

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