FOREIGN SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES.

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, Tuesday, January 15, 1924.

The committee this day met, Hon. Stephen G. Porter (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. We will resume hearings on the Rogers bill.

STATEMENT OF HON. HUGH GIBSON, MINISTER TO POLAND— Resumed.

Mr. ROGERS of Massachusetts. The question is sometimes asked why if the service is as good as is sometimes alleged there is any reason for the reorganization of the service at all. Will you discuss in your own way and your own time your views as to the merits and shortcomings of our foreign service, as now constituted, with an indication of why you believe the service can be and should be improved, if that is your view?

Mr. GIBSON. I think there is the fullest justification for the high opinion that has been formed as to the performances of the service, but it has never been put on a modern basis, and it is capable of a very broad margin of improvement. We have never made a career that can attract men without means away from private business or enable men to adopt the career with a view to continuing it throughout their lives. They are obliged to contemplate the possibility of getting out and providing for their old age on the strength of the experience that they have gained in the service. This is a medieval system. It is not only undemocratic and un-American and all the other things we have called it, but above all it is extremely unbusiness like. Even the old Governments that we look upon as reactionary have always made a career which was open to anybody who really had the qualifications regardless of their social status or their financial status, and until we do the same thing we shall never have the breadth of choice which is the only sound basis for selection. As it is now we have an examination for the Diplomatic Service with 6 or 8 places to fill. We have 50 candidates.

It is manifest if we had 200 or 300 candidates to fill those 6 or 8 places that we would get a much better type of men. We have got to take pretty well what we can get, and we will continue in that state until we have adopted the very conservative improvements that are provided in the bill by way of reasonable pay and retirement allowances, some security of tenure, and an opportunity for advancement. If Mr. Carr will let me speak for the Consular

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Service to this extent, our best men in the Consular Service and in the Diplomatic Service are drawn off into business because while they can advance to a certain point their advancement beyond that is pretty well blocked, and they feel they must find an outlet in private enterprise. Instead of that we ought to be able to attract people away from business into the Government-the exact opposite of what really happens.

As matters now stand, on the basis of this very limited choice of material, we have a small number of men in the Diplomatic ServiceI will let Mr. Carr speak for the Consular Service-we have a small number of men who ought not to be in office and who would not be there if we could offer attractions to better men. They constitute a dead weight on the back of the Diplomatic Service and nobody resents their presence any more than we do, or as much as we do. They are one of our principal problems and until they are removed we are going to labor under a very heavy handicap. You hear very frequently about the boys with the white spats, the tea drinkers, the cookie pushers, and while they are a very small minority, but they make a noise entirely disproportionate to their numbers. Any cranks, any sort of freaks, make an impression that is out of proportion to their numbers. But they are a reproach to us and when an American goes into one of our missions abroad and is properly taken care of, as he should as a matter of course, he takes his treatment for granted, but when he is received by one of these second raters of whom we hear so much he remembers it for years, and he is very properly indignant at it. Our great problem now is to attract enough men so that we will have a real choice of material and crowd out those incompetents and defectives. If we can do that we can build up the service, but until we can do that we can not hope to do it.

The CHAIRMAN. Until such time as that, two or three men of the type you mention will discredit a whole nation.

Mr. GIBSON. There is no doubt of it.

The CHAIRMAN. As a rule they do not do much work.

Mr. GIBSON. We have some of the type who do not do any work. The CHAIRMAN. As a rule they are men of independent influence. and therefore feel that they are more or less free from governmental control.

Mr. GIBSON. And they are so long as we can not get men from whom to choose.

Mr. ROGERS of Massachusetts. I have heard a story which will typify the situation which now prevails where a secretary asked for a year's leave of absence to go big-game shooting in central Africa. He could not be spared. He was a pretty good official and there were no reserves and the leave was denied him. He said, "All right, I will go on leave or retire from the service." They did not have anybody that they could call in his place, and therefore they said to him, "You can have your year's leave of absence." I do not know whether you are familiar with that particular incident, but is not that the sort of thing that results from the inability to have first-rate reserves pushing for the opportunity for appointment as vacancies arise?

Mr. GIBSON. It makes it hard to have a very effective discipline if you can not replace a man when he should be put out of the service. I have talked at some length about the undesirables in the service because I feel that they constitute a serious problem. However, I hope I have not conveyed the idea that they are numerous. They are not. They constitute a small minority-a very small minority. I can not say a negligible minority, because they do us too much harm to be ignored. The unfortunate thing is that they discredit the majority in the eyes of the general public. Having said so much about them I should like to add a few words about the rest of the service. The large majority of our men make up a group of which we can be very proud indeed. No other branch of the service can show their superiors in ability, industry, devotion, loyalty, and sound Americanism. I don't believe any country has a finer group of men in the classified ranks of the foreign service. If we can offer these men enough to justify them in remaining in the service of the Government and can reinforce them with new men chosen by competition it will not take long to give us by far the best service in the world, and if we are to take proper care of our interests the best will be none too good.

Mr. ROGERS of Massachusetts. I should like to have you discuss also in your own way the relationships of the diplomatic side of the service to American business protection abroad. We hear, of course, of the consular side of the service as primarily the business arm of the State Department. You have spoken to me informally in the past about the kind of thing that in your view diplomacy can do in these modern days for the protection of American business.

Mr. GIBSON. I think we make one mistake very often. There is a statement often made to the effect that diplomacy has become almost entirely a matter of business, and that we have got to have men more specialized in business to handle diplomacy.

That is putting the question the wrong way around. Diplomacy has not become a matter of business but, under the exacting conditions of modern organized life, business has become so international in character that it has more and more need for the assistance and support of diplomacy.

One might as well say that the legal profession has become entirely a matter of business, whereas we all know that under modern conditions business concerns need more and more the advice and active assistance of legal counsel and the lawyer is assuming a larger and larger rôle in the conduct of our business. It would never enter the mind of anybody, however, to suggest that the law has become so entirely a matter of business that we should disbar all practicing lawyers and put in their places men who have had business experience in running banks, factories, and railroads. We know just what a mess would ensue if we did. Instead of that, we try to broaden the training of our lawyers in order that they may render better service to business. In the same way we should seek to train more efficient diplomats in order that they may afford more effective assistance and support to our business abroad.

There are doubtless special occasions when it may be desirable to choose an individual business man because of his special qualifications for a given post at a given time. It can hardly be said, how

ever, that business men are better than anybody else to act as chiefs of mission, because they have only one phase of the training that is necessary, whereas the trained diplomat should have a complete and well-rounded equipment to handle all phases of his work. To say that business men should be put in charge of our embassies because business enters so largely into diplomacy, would be like saying that business men should be used exclusively in place of lawyers because business questions enter so largely into the law.

It must be remembered that diplomacy concerns itself with the whole range of intercourse between nations. These relations depend on many factors-economic, political, and psychological. To lay stress on the economic side to the exclusion of all the others is to take a one-sided and distorted view. A business man appointed to a diplomatic post is rarely equipped to estimate accurately the value of these different factors-it would be surprising if he could. His natural intelligence may conceivably compensate for the deficiencies of his training and he may achieve remarkable success, but it would be unfair and unreasonable to expect this of him merely because he had been a successful business man. And it is to be remembered that, while we have some isolated examples of business men doing good work, we have infinitely more instances where business men have made a sad mess of things.

It is clear to everybody in the field that there is no comparison between the amount of official support and assistance needed by a business man now and that which he needed before the war. In pre-war times practically all business was a matter of private enterprise, and if one of our people went abroad for the purpose of selling goods, securing a contract, or establishing a branch, he crossed the ocean, got into direct touch with the right people, completed his business, and went home. In nineteen cases out of twenty he had no occasion to call on his diplomatic representative for help.

Now all that is changed. Our fundamental duty is to maintain a full equality of opportunity so that American business may participate in any field of enterprise on a parity with competing interests. In pre-war days this was met by keeping other governments from building up tariff walls, discriminatory legislation, and the like. So long as the field was free of these obstacles the individual business man was pretty well able to look after himself in competition with foreign business men. This is no longer true. Business, in Europe especially, is to an almost unbelievable extent either in the hands of the various governments, supported by governmental subvention, or subject to some form of government control. In such conditions the individual business man can no longer shift for himself. He must have help at every step. These changed conditions require changed methods. Our guiding principle remains the same-to secure and safeguard equality of opportunity-but in order to secure it we must do many things we should never have been called on to do before.

When the American business man arrives in a foreign country to secure a contract he comes to the legation, if he is wise, and tells us what he wants to do. Usually he needs to meet all sorts of people, official and unofficial. We have him meet these people either in their offices or at the legation under more favorable auspices. While he is drawing up his contract he comes to us frequently, sometimes

as often as two or three times a day, to discuss the terms that are offered him and the counter proposals he should make. We being on the ground, having had experience in this particular line, are expected to steer him safely past the pitfalls of inexperience and help him get a contract that will not involve him in future difficulties. When he brings in the materials to be used on his contract he usually turns to us for assistance in getting him favorable tariff treatment and composing his differences with the customs authorities, and for advice at each step of his business. This continues throughout the duration of the contract, and then our serious work usually begins about the time that payment falls due. When it comes to getting real money in payment we are almost always called in to render more or less assistance, varying from expressions of friendly interest to definite representations which lead to ultimate payment. Aside from all this, rival interests frequently come in and try to upset the contract or to render it of no value after it has been carried out, by putting over rival arrangements. Foreign officials sometimes lend themselves to campaigns against such contracts, and they must be dealt with. But all this is merely protecting the equality of opportunity which our people must have.

Before the war the American ran his own business with only occasional recourse to diplomatic support. To-day we have just as definite and continuous a participation in his business, his successes, his worries, and his failures as if we were the attorneys of his firm, retained by the year; and he comes to us with the same freedom and the same expectation that we will exert ourselves to render him effective support.

Mr. MOORE. Is it not very largely also in opening up opportunities for him?

Mr. GIBSON. Yes, sir; but we help him indirectly more particularly. It is expert services which can be compared with the service he gets from an attorney. We have the contacts and are able to take short cuts for him if we are properly equipped to do it.

Mr. LINTHICUM. I thought that came more especially under the consular service.

Mr. GIBSON. There is a distinction to make there. Where he is dealing with the local authorities he is entirely dependent upon the consular service for support, but where it is a matter of dealing with the central government he is entirely dependent upon the diplomatic service, and sometimes you get a man who has to deal with both the diplomatic and consular services in which case they are supposed to do effective team work.

Mr. MOORE. How is that with respect to the English activities? Do not they work along the same lines?

Mr. GIBSON. Yes, sir. That brings us to another thing we often hear about. We are often asked why the British Government protects the interests of its nationals so much better than Americans do.

As a matter of fact I do not believe that the British Government affords any superior brand of protection to British business men, in fact, I have frequently heard comment by Englishmen to the effect that American representatives are prepared to go further on behalf of their nationals than are British representatives. I think, however, it is true that very often the assistance is really less effective than that rendered by our British colleagues, and this is the essence