reports on their own initiative from the moment they enter the service. In the daily routine of office work they are brought into personal contact with the foreign business community and first-hand information is always at their command. The material which they supply is given broad dissemination in the United States and has proved of the greatest value in keeping the American business public accurately informed of conditions and commercial opportunities abroad."1

At posts of recognized commercial importance, trained consular officers are frequently assigned for specialized work in trade matters, their entire attention being devoted to the subject. Intensive study of a particular territory, or of an industry, like cotton textiles, or of a world commodity, like oil, develops the expert type of foreign representative whose reports are not only interesting and instructive; but whose judgments are balanced and dependable.

The great emphasis that has been placed on tradeextension work since the war finds its reflection in the fact that within the past five years the volume of consular reports on commercial subjects has more than doubled. In like degree, the quality of these reports is steadily improving; they are becoming more specific in character, more analytical, more clearly presented, and despatched with greater timeliness. Almost one-half of the consular trade reports are made on the request of the Department of Commerce, and follow the frame

21 An interesting observation was made in the British House of Commons during the recent debate on the diplomatic and consular bill, by Sir Park Goff, who stated: "Spain is the jumping-off ground for South America, and immediately the United States came into the War all the sea ports of Spain and Portugal, and all the towns, were flooded with Consuls and Vice-Consuls, and so-called Naval Consuls from America, but if you scratched any one of these men you found a most astute and thoroughly capable commercial traveller."-Parliamentary Debates, Official Report, vol. 116, p. 296.

work of its questionnaires. All reports are graded and criticized in the Department of State, and the efficiency record of each officer in the service shows his relative rating in commercial work.

But the value of consular commercial work is not limited to aiding particular traders in the marketing of their wares. The reports of consular officers are used for national purposes; they are given concrete application in the Department of State to the solution of foreign problems and to the shaping of international policies.

Politico-economic functions.-The back-ground of diplomacy lies in the consular field. It is economic. It deals with minerals, agricultural production, manufactures, exports and imports, finance, the sources of wealth, the avenues of commerce, the balance of trade.

In this material age, the first duty of a nation is to provide for the economic welfare of its people. Where its own natural resources are deficient for this purpose, it must find other means; expansion, colonization, conquest, the control of keystone commodities, the export of capital, emigration, "peaceful penetration." Diplomatic policy follows the dictates of the national urge; it plays the hand of the nation as to what it possesses and what it needs; to-day it defends a treasure, tomorrow it seeks one; its stakes are food and shelter.22

22 Witness the following recent observation in a foreign journal with respect to ourselves: "What will happen when the American people as a whole, and not merely a few American students of world affairs, begin to realize that the fallow fertility of their garden has been exhausted, and that, if their energies are to find employment and their needs satisfaction in the future, they must break new ground? Will they use their great but transient preponderance of material resources in order to conquer fresh reserves by some formidable adventure in imperialism? Evidently at this moment they are in a vacillating state of mind. A long national tradition of inward concentration and aloofness from external affairs cannot be reversed in a day; but while the Administration at Washington has been withdrawing its troops at the first opportunities from Coblenz and Vladivostock, and Congress has been rejecting treaty-commitments in Europe,

The consul functions in the economic domain. His duties and his habit of mind are analytical. He must watch commercial developments with respect to their political effect, and political changes in their economic repercussions. He must report on these, giving the figures, the facts, and the reasons.

Through a sudden burst of consciousness the broad utility of this domain of observation seems to have impressed itself upon the world. The foremost nations have made quick to reorganize their foreign services on an interchangeable basis with a view to providing consular training for diplomatic officers, or bringing consuls forward into the diplomatic field." It is the principle of the Dawes plan in foreign affairs; the business or economic determination of political issues. Books on politico-economic subjects are appearing at a rapid rate in an attempt to discover to the world what every good consul should know already; namely, the hidden economic motives of international policy.

Diplomatic and consular coordination.-Secretary of State Robert Lansing, in his letter to Honorable John Jacob Rogers, January 21, 1920, stated:

"The fact that there are a number of consular officers stationed within the territorial jurisdiction of each mission, working in ignorance of the policies which it is endeavoring to promote, is further evidence of the lack of unity of purpose in our Foreign Service. Such a state of affairs leaves in the mind the impression of latent forces going to waste through want of cohesive organization.

American trade and finance have been extending their activities all over the world; and, where national wealth has been invested in certain quantities, it has hitherto been an almost automatic law of international relationships that political intervention should follow."-The Nation & The Athenaeum, London, October 4, 1924.

"Italy now expressly reserves forty diplomatic positions for consuls.

99 24

"We must gain the additional impetus that will be given to the forces of our diplomacy by harmonizing the efforts of these local consular units with those of the mission itself, thus enabling American policies and American conceptions to be reflected in their true light with the same vision and with united effort throughout the entire land to which these officers are accredited." The problem of diplomatic and consular co-ordination is thus succinctly posed. Formerly, through what is now recognized to have been an erroneous conception, the consular service of every nation was considered as functioning along detached commercial lines, far removed from the subjects of diplomacy. It is now seen that much of the basic data of diplomacy is in the hands of the consul; that his facts are important, that his sources are valuable, and that his economic training is urgently needed in coping with many of the present-day aspects of international problems.

Of course the ultimate aim is to develop a new type of diplomatist-one who possesses both political and economic qualities—but for the time being, as these qualities are separately possessed, they must be brought together by organization. To accomplish this, the activities of the Consular Service, with respect to its separate units in a given jurisdiction, must be brought to a focus in the supervising consulate general and there linked with the action of the diplomatic mission. In this synchronizing process, the consulate general becomes the point of juncture; the instrument of co-ordination. Here we find what may be considered the broadest phase of consular activity; that of plowing the international subsoil for the diplomatic mission; gath

24 Printed in the hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs on H. R. 17 and H. R. 6857, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 82,

ering data and weighing facts- the advisory field.

The consular branch of the Foreign Service is entering new fields. The world is crying for commercial diplomats for analysts who are able to determine what economic exigencies are dictating the motives of other nations, and what may be done about it, if anything.

A suitable instrumentality for such a purpose is not impossible or even difficult of achievement. It should be a definite goal in the scheme of Foreign Service reorganization as relating to the highest purpose for which it exists.

Bibliography.

Angell, James B.: "The Consular Service and the Spoils System"; Century Mag., vol. 48, June, 1894.

Adams, Robert: "Faults in Our Consular Service"; North American Review, vol. 156, April, 1893.

Borchard, Edwin M.: "The Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad"; Banks Law Pub. Co., New York, 1915.

Bowman, S.: "The New World. Problems in Political Geography"; World Book Co., Yonkers on Hudson, 1921.

Carr, Wilbur J.: "The American Consular Service"; American Journal of International Law; 1:891 (1907).

Carr, Wilbur J.: "What Your Consuls Do"; American Consular Bulletin, January, 1922.

Caillaux, Joseph: "Whither France? Whither Europe?"; Knopf, New York, 1923.

Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, and Illinois League of Women Voters: "Conference on the Economic Aspects of International Affairs."

Clark, J. R.: "The Right to Protect Citizens in Foreign Countries by Landing Forces"; Washington, 1912.

Cooper, Clayton Sedgwick: "Foreign Trade Markets and Methods"; Appleton & Co., New York, 1922.

Hinckley, F. E.: "American Consular Jurisdiction in the Orient"; Washington, 1906.

Jones, C. L.: "The Consular Service of the U. S."; New York, 1906.