Nichols, W. W.: "Reorganization of the Foreign Service of our Government"; Address before the Seventh National Foreign Trade Convention, San Francisco, May 13, 1920.

Recouly, Raymond: "Journalism and International Politics"; Harper's Magazine, December, 1922.

Root, Elihu: "The Need for a Popular Understanding of International Law"; American Journal of International Law, 1:1, 1905.

CHAPTER XIII

HOMES FOR OUR DIPLOMATS

The chief defect of the Foreign Service. -The Foreign Service is not yet democratized. In spite of all that has been accomplished through the passage of the Rogers act, the grades of ambassador and minister are still and almost exclusively the spoils of the rich. It is true that representation allowances have been authorized to supplement the salaries of our principal diplomatic representatives to a degree which promises to lighten the burden on their private incomes, but even when liberal appropriations are obtained for this purpose complete democratization will not have been achieved. From the beginning of the government the inadequacy of the compensation paid our foreign representatives has been a source of national humiliation and scandal.1

The experience of Thomas Jefferson.-On June 17, 1785, Thomas Jefferson, then on diplomatic mission to Paris, wrote to Colonel Monroe as follows:

“I find that, by a rigid economy, bordering, however, on meanness, I can save, perhaps, five hundred livres a month, at least in the summer. The residue goes for expenses, so much of course and of necessity, that I cannot avoid them, without abandoning all respect for my public character. Yet I will pray you to touch this string, which I know to be a tender one, with Congress, with the utmost delicacy. I had rather be ruined in my fortune than in their esteem. If they allow me half a

1See Chapter IX.

year's salary as an outfit, I can get through my debts in time. If they raise the salary to what it was (2,500 pounds), or even pay our house rent and taxes, I can live with more decency.'

9 2

A Senate resolution.-Many years later, in 1851, the Senate became interested in the better adjustment of diplomatic compensation, and on January 31 of that year adopted a resolution reading as follows:

"Resolved, that the Secretary of State be requested to communicate to the Senate any information which he may possess touching the expediency of adopting a graduated scale of diplomatic salaries, based upon the combined considerations of the importance of the mission and the expenses of residence."

When analyzed, both the letter of Thomas Jefferson and the resolution of the Senate will be found to recognize the principle that the Government should pay the rent on its official establishments abroad instead of requiring the ambassador to do so, or in other words, that for purposes of economy, and many additional reasons, it should own its embassy, legation and consular buildings. But this principle is too well established in the practice of other nations to admit of any question as to its advisability, or rather of its necessity. There is no other important nation which fails to provide appropriate housing accommodations for its diplomats.

The views of Honorable Nicholas Longworth.—In order to bring the situation promptly to its modern focus, it is instructive to examine the views of Honorable Nicholas Longworth, as expressed in the House of Representatives May 23, 1906. He said:

"No one but a very rich man, even as riches are

2 House Doc. No. 94, 22nd Cong., 2nd Sess., vol. 5, Foreign Relations,

P. 11.

counted nowadays, can be an ambassador of the United States in any European capital, and no man who is not at least comparatively wealthy, as we speak of comparative wealth in these days, can be a minister of the United States at any important diplomatic post. In other words, these offices, among the most dignified and important in the gift of the American people, are for rich men and rich men alone. This republic, the greatest, the most democratic republic which has ever existed, has to-day an office-holding aristocracy, an aristocracy more repugnant to our ideals of free institutions than any aristocracy even in Russia, an aristocracy purely and solely of the dollar. The office of ambassador, with the sole exception of the President, is the public official who is the representative of all the American people, can not be filled and never will be filled under our present system by any except a very rich man. I care not how able a man may be, how learned in international law, how experienced in diplomacy, how celebrated in statesmanship, if with all these qualifications he does not possess the one absolutely necessary qualification of great wealth, he is not eligible for appointment to any great diplomatic post. So well has this fact become recognized that there have been of late many instances of men whose sole claim, frankly stated, was that of great wealth, who were serious applicants for appointment as ambassadors. ***

"Every day we hear on both sides of this chamber that the most serious menace to this country is an aristocracy of wealth. The people are determined that the great public utilities, the great industries of this country, shall not become concentrated in the hands of a few men. Is it not more offensive to our ideals that the high offices should become so concentrated? This being

the spirit of the people, shall we continue to support an office-holding class, a dollar class, the very ideal of the aristocracy of wealth? Shall the Congress continue to tie the hands of the President and circumscribe his choice in filling great diplomatic positions to men whose only qualification, absolutely necessary qualification, is that 'they have the price'?"

All former protests still valid.-The situation thus described has not altered appreciably since the words were uttered, notwithstanding that the United States has become the wealthiest nation on earth and its international interests have assumed an entirely new importance. The mode of living of American ambassadors and ministers continues to be as obtruding upon the public attention as at any previous epoch. At one moment there will be an ostentatious display of personal wealth, accompanied by a meager degree of diplomatic fitness or ability, and a year or two later a successor in office will reverse the compromising display by lamentable efforts to economize and noticeable discomfiture in the task. Between these two extremes lies the formula of good taste, and American ideals will continue to be falsified to the world until we adopt it. To say that a foreign representative of the United States should not be appropriately housed, like all representative establishments in this country, is a penurious species of national hypocrisy; to say that he should be allowed, in the name of Uncle Sam, to wallow in his own wealth in other lands, and before strangers, is shocking to our sense of national dignity and pride. Too long it has been believed in foreign countries that the United States lays chief stress upon wealth. Such impressions stigmatize the nation with the damaging charge of materialism and dollar-worship, neglecting altogether the higher qualities