The Fatal Door
A TENDENCY to shrink from self-congratulation •^*- when it seems indicated has never been noted of our Vice-President. But when Mr. Charles G. Dawes, in his recent speech before the graduating...
...The history of the State Department abroad is not a heartening one...
...Uncle Sam, who is a good paymaster for piecework, has always been a little chary of loosing the national purse-strings too wide in remunerating routine duties...
...The growing criticism of the career men," says the New York World in its editorial upon the Dawes speech, "ought to be centered on these latter...
...The World criticism is, in a way, the reaction to be expected in democracies when any attempt is made to evolve a privileged class...
...They tend to be shut in within their social set...
...Dawes, "must interfere with the selection for important negotiations of those whose qualifications have been tested by the successful bearing of great responsibility in times of emergency...
...For many reasons Mr...
...It is silently passing from the hands of their representatives...
...Louis, turned from domestic politics and the misdeeds of the Senate to deliver an attack all along the line upon the "career" diplomatists, there is no reason to see in his remarks merely an oblique eulogy upon the famous Plan, and the man whose name it bears...
...Dawes's plea for quick diplomacy, for greater power in the hands of fewer people, for diplomatic conferences whose model, he makes no secret, are the sort of meetings that take place "when in any great city in a money panic the leading financiers meet to confer over measures for the protection of general credit," is too consonant with the modern worship of business methods in every department of life not to secure a good deal of support...
...This fatal door in these conventions through which the rightful powers of the Senate will pass into the hands of the Executive, should be closed, so that a mere diplomatic agreement concluded by the President cannot bind the government of the United States and all the states and all the people to obey it as the supreme law of the United States...
...Nothing is to be gained today by recalling the "bad old days" when a diplomatic appointment at St...
...Dawes quite evidently believes, is when the arangement is concluded which these "tested" men have drawn up, and the country is committed...
...Charles G. Dawes, in his recent speech before the graduating class of Washington University, St...
...The best time to "inform" public sentiment, Mr...
...Petersburg, Stockholm or the Golden Horn was the reward for services to the Republican or Democratic machine often of a nature far from elevated...
...But that it will meet with opposition is no less certain...
...But in reprobating it, and recommending the consular service as the training ground for diplomats, the World is following its own train of thought rather than Mr...
...It is the more plausible because, in a country where no social category exists (at any rate overtly) whose mere names are a guarantee for the acceptability of its members as representatives abroad, the selection almost always has to be made upon a basis of personal means...
...They are peculiarly sensitive to the influence of rich expatriates who are residing in the various capitals abroad...
...Dawes's...
...And again: "When the Premier, the head of a State Department or the Minister of Foreign Affairs goes to an important conference . . . he better than anyone else knows the extent to which it is safe to antagonize temporary public sentiment at home in order to reach reasonable agreement abroad which domestic public sentiment, when fully informed, would favor...
...The minority report of the Senate, issued at the time the Roosevelt treaties first alarmed the instinct of our legislators for balances and safeguards, still stands, and nothing that has happened since robs it of significance...
...They are trained in the etiquette of diplomacy, but few of them have any real experience in any part of the world or any thorough grasp of the economic and political problems with which they have to deal...
...They do a fair amount of social climbing...
...They are in effect a rather close corporation of rich and favored individuals, who arrange among themselves for their own promotion to the best posts...
...No internal policy of appointments," says Mr...
...Those who are interested in the subject will find a frank and entertaining chapter on the humiliating incidents to which the practice gave rise in a lively travel book published by a young broker named Ireland seventy years ago, and entitled From Wall Street to Kashmir...
...It is the perpetuation of the system which took resettlement in Europe out of the hands of those who had borne the burden and heat which rendered resettlement possible...
...A disposition to let public service be considered its own reward is the reverse side of the shield in a country where the rewards for doing the best one can for oneself are illimitable...
...What is more important to note is that the reform of the whole business of diplomatic representation upon the European basis, and the creation of a corps d'elite, staffed by appointment and with steady promotion as its reward, has, in the opinion of Mr...
...Dawes's strictures are well in line with the popular estimate of the men who make diplomacy their profession, and the mere fact that they cause that muchtobe-considered person the man of affairs shine by contrast is enough to secure them a good press...
...The World has been speaking of the appointee men who graduate from South American posts to Europe, and comparing them unfavorably with the consulate-bred men in the Far East...
...Dawes and those who think with him, only replaced one set of ills by another...
...What the Vice-President is recommending is not a mere change in diplomatic personnel...
...The firm grasp upon our relations with foreign governments, placed in the hands of a minority of one-third of the Senate by the Constitution, whereby entangling alliances and wars have often been prevented, is being relaxed and the people are losing that power of self-protection...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 7
