t

John Hay, diplomatically the most accomplished of State Secretaries, held office under both McKinley and Roosevelt.

In spite of the "spoils system" too, the permanent staff of the State Department has changed much less than might be expected. Every public department in every civilised government possesses from time to time a Nestor, a civil servant who by reason of his accumulated experience, his capacity for hard work, his adaptability and his unbroken good health, becomes indispensable, and remains to the end a quiet, persuasive, established power in the office. Ministers come and go, but the tactful, industrious, experienced principal clerk or secretary is always present, knows all the rules, remembers all the precedents, and has the proper formula for meeting new situations. The State Department at Washington has been fortunate in possessing such officials. William Hunter was chief clerk of the Department from 1829 to 1886, and formed the permanent background of the foreign policy of sixteen Presidents and twenty-six Secretaries of State. In later times John Basset, Moore, the author of the International Arbitrations to which the United States has been a Party, was connected with the State Department as clerk, assistant secretary of State, counsellor or adviser in matters of international law, for forty years (1885-1925); and Alvey A. Adee was an assistant secretary of State for fortytwo years (1882-1924) under no less than ten Presidents. Of Mr. Adee the biographer of John Hay says:

Administrations came and went, Adee stayed on. Presidents ignorant of diplomacy and international law felt reasonably safe in appointing as their chief Secretaries gentlemen as ignorant as themselves, because they knew that Adee was there to guard against blunders. He was the master of both the language and the practice of diplomacy. He could draw up notes, memorandum, protocol or instructions, not merely in just the right words, but with the indefinable tone of courtesy or coolness which the occasion required. His knowledge of American diplomatic history was unrivalled. His capacity for work, like his cheerfulness, never ran out. Hay called him semper paratus Adee. An invaluable man. 1

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§3. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND THE FOREIGN OFFICE

The Confederation of American States which fought the Revolutionary War and made the Peace of Versailles with Great Britain

1 W. R. Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay (1916), II, 187.

had Departments of Finance, War, Marine, Post Office, and Foreign Affairs; but these came to an end with the establishing of the Constitution of 1787. The Constitution did not expressly provide for the creation of Executive Departments, but "it spoke of them as things which would be established as a matter of course": in fact, it really assumed their existence.1

Accordingly, when the first Congress held under the Constitution met in 1789, a proposal was made to establish various departments. James Madison proposed a Department of Foreign Affairs, with an officer at its head, to be called the Secretary. John Vining, of Delaware, proposed the establishment of a Home Department, to correspond with the several States of the Union, to keep the Seal, keep copies of public documents, and attend to similar matters. This proposal, however, found little favour. The Bill to create a Department of foreign affairs was carried; but with regard to home affairs it was decided that no separate office was necessary: the less correspondence undertaken by the Federal Government with the States of the Union, the better it would be for all concerned; and as for the keeping of the Seal and the preservation of documents, the Foreign Department could do all that. Accordingly an amended Bill was passed through Congress, and approved by the President, George Washington, on September 15, 1789, to the effect:

That the Executive Department, denominated the Department of Foreign Affairs, shall hereafter be denominated the Department of State, and the principal officer shall hereafter be called the Secretary of State.

The said Secretary of State was to have custody of the Seal, make out commissions, and keep the public papers. Thus there came into existence the great State Department, with the Secretary of State in charge of Foreign Affairs, and of Home Affairs too, although he was bound to hand over to the Treasury and War Departments the papers and records which pertained to them. The State Department, in fact, is a combination of what in Great Britain are called the Foreign Office and the Home Office, and it unites in itself the special eminence of both.

In thus creating one State Department and one Secretary of State, the new American people showed their conservatism, their deeply rooted English tradition. For the English Secretariat of

1 Gaillard Hunt, The Department of State of the United States (1914), p. 54.

State at this time dealt with both foreign and home affairs: the Foreign Office and the Home Office had not been definitely separated from each other.

For the greater part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth there was only one Secretary of State. In the Queen's later years, a second Secretary of State was added, and all the home and foreign affairs of the Crown passed through these two channels. The first two Stuart kings introduced further organisation. They divided the Secretariat into a Northern and a Southern Department. The Secretary of State for the Northern Department dealt with all correspondence of the Crown relating to Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, and Russia. The Secretary of State for the Southern Department had charge of the correspondence with France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, and Turkey; he also had charge of home affairs. Thus the Secretary for the Southern Department really combined the work of the present Home Office and the Western and South-Eastern European sections of the Foreign Office; the Secretary for the Northern Department was a purely Foreign Secretary for the area of the Baltic and North Sea. But the duties of the Secretaries of State were, in time of necessity, interchangeable, as indeed they still are: any one Secretary of State can legally do the work of any other.

The modern division of the Secretariat into Foreign Office and Home Office (other Secretaryships of State have been added still later) dates from 1782. Charles James Fox, on being appointed by the Prime Minister, Lord Rockingham, to the Northern Secretariat, announced a change of system in a letter to the representatives of Great Britain abroad. He wrote (March 27, 1782) that His Majesty had named him Secretary of State for the Department of Foreign Affairs. At the same time he announced that His Majesty had conferred on Lord Shelburne (who would under the old system have been Southern Secretary) the Department of Home Affairs.1 Thus in 1782 Great Britain definitely divided its policy into the Home and Foreign branches, with a separate Department and Secretary of State for each; but the young United States, seven years later, when it was organising its governmental institutions, preferred to keep the two branches of policy under one

1 No Order in Council or Departmental Minute authorised the change. See Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution (1907), II, i, 165, and Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne (ed. 1912), II, 90.

roof, and (subject to the control of President and Senate) in one pair of hands. The difference in size between the population of Great Britain and of the United States was sufficient reason for the first having two Secretaries of State and the other only one. Queen Elizabeth conducted all the affairs of England through one Secretary of State. The United States' Secretariat is Elizabethan.

§4. WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Washington (as Charles Dickens noticed over eighty years ago) is a city of magnificent distances. The State Department is the southern section of the huge building which houses also the War and Navy Departments. Built in 1875, it stands in Pennsylvania Avenue next to the White House. Before 1875 the State Department had many wanderings. The old Department of Foreign Affairs, of which Robert Livingston was the first Secretary (from 1781 to 1783), had a modest house in Philadelphia. Livingston resigned in June, 1783. The next Secretary, John Jay, was not appointed until May, 1784. He continued in office until the new Constitution came into effect in the summer of 1789, when the modern State Department was established, and Thomas Jefferson became the first Secretary. During Jay's period of office, the Department was moved, with the rest of the Government, to New York, where it remained, occupying only two rooms, until 1788. It then moved back to Philadelphia, migrated temporarily (on account of the yellow fever) to Trenton in 1798, and at last, in 1800, found a home in Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington. Even in those early days the State Department shared a house with the Department of War. The British raid on Washington on August 24, 1814, only displaced the State Department for a day or two. James Monroe, who was then Secretary, retired with President Madison to the Virginia side of the Potomac River.1 On returning to Washington the Department occupied various buildings successively until its present quarters were built in 1875. There, in the Diplomatic Reception-room, the portraits of all the Secretaries of State from 1789 to the present day can be seen, a gallery of tranquil figures, viewing with serene countenance the scene of their strenuous labours.

Well-staffed and well-equipped as the Department is, its management of detail has not always been above criticism. Walter H. 1 McMaster, A History of the People of the United States (1903), IV, 142.

Page, while Ambassador at London, from 1913 to 1918, complained of frequent "leakages " from Washington.1 His staff were “actually afraid to have a confidential dispatch go to the State Department," which Page compared unfavourably with the "big doors and silent men" of the Foreign Office in Downing Street. Nevertheless, a reading of history proves that the State Department has made few mistakes of technique.

Policy is made not only at the White House and State Department. On the same great avenue, in the centre of the city of Washington, is the Capitol, where Congress sits. The House of Representatives (except in treaties concerning tariffs) has little to do with foreign affairs; but the Senate, by Article II, Section II of the Constitution, can reject any treaty which the President makes. There is a Senatorial standing Committee on Foreign Affairs; and the chairman of this committee may, through experience, knowledge, and force of character, impress himself upon the foreign policy of his country, and combine something of the influence both of a Minister and a permanent official. The position of the Chairman of the Senate Committee is, it is true, one of criticism rather than of action. The Committee cannot make treaties; but its reports can usually bring about either the amendment or rejection of any proposed treaty. The Senate is extremely tenacious of its control over foreign policy; and no President or Secretary of State can for a moment afford to neglect the Chairman of the Senate Committee. Charles Sumner, chairman from March, 1861, to March, 1871, and Henry Cabot Lodge, chairman in more recent years, must rank in the diplomatic history of their country with Seward and Hay. In a sense, the Chairman of the Senate Committee may be more powerful than the Secretary of State: for the Chairman is independent of changes in the Administration and the veto of himself and his committee is almost absolute. A strong-minded chairman of long experience has some of the strength given by autocracy (his own), aristocracy (the Senate's), and democracy (the public opinion, and the party-machine which is behind him). The emergence of the Chairman and Senate Committee as a kind of third power in the Constitution (ranking with the President and Secretary of State), in the control of foreign affairs, is a striking feature of American history in the last fifty or sixty years.

1 1 Cp. The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, by Burton J. Kendrick (1921), I, 225.