No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
In all countries, the publications of the foreign office hold a peculiar position among government documents. Statesmen appear to be more reticent in informing the public on foreign relations than in regard to any other governmental function. This reticence seems to obtain in democracies as well as autocracies. There are exceptions, such as post-war Germany and Soviet Russia, where the new governments entered upon a policy of disclosing almost everything in past diplomacy for the purpose of exposing the incompetency of the Hohenzollern and Romanov régimes. But these exceptions are conspicuously few. It is, of course, too much to expect foreign offices to publish all diplomatic correspondence and official reports. Some of these communications concern private persons whose affairs should not be exhibited to public gaze. Other papers contain tentative proposals and counter-proposals made in the course of negotiations, and should not, in fairness to all governments involved, be published at the time. Finally, much of the correspondence is merely routine. Nevertheless, it will probably be generally conceded that in a democracy the people ought to have opportunity for wide information regarding the conduct of foreign relations.
In the United States the chief official sources of information include: the President's annual message, Foreign Relations, the Treaty Series, mimeographed press releases, the Register of the Department of State and other lists, and occasional documents issued by the Department of State. It has been the practice of the President to devote a large portion of his annual message to Congress to a resumé of international relations for the year.
1 This document, entitled “Report of the Secretary of State to the President, December 7, 1896,” followed the annual message of President Cleveland as published in Foreign Relations (1896), pp. lxiii–xciiiGoogle Scholar. It was also printed as a separate document.
2 An able argument for the publication of an annual report by the Secretary of State was made by Professor Hudson, Manley O. in the American Journal of International Law, July, 1928. pp. 624–629CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Compare Message of the President of the United States Transmitting a Treaty to Regulate the General Relations between the United States and Turkey, signed at Lausanne, on August 6,1923. Confidential. 68th Cong., 1st sess., Executive Z.
4 Compare the testimony of Dr.Dennett, Tyler in Hearings before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations in charge of Departments of State, Justice, Commerce, and Labor Appropriation Bill for 1930, Seventieth Congress, Second Session, p. 59Google Scholar.
5 Proceedings of the Second Conference of Teachers of International Law and Related Subjects, Held in Washington, D. C, April 28–25, 1925, pp. 55–58, 120–121Google Scholar.
6 The Department of State and the Teaching of International Law and International Relations,” Proceedings of the Third Conference, 1928, pp. 31–52, 170–177.
7 Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 1928, p. 141. An account of the action of the American Society of International Law, as well as of the Third Conference, is given by George A. Finch under the title of “Enlargement of the Publications of the Department of State” in the American Journal of International Law, July, 1928, pp. 629–632Google Scholar.
8 Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations: United States Senate, Seventieth Congress, First Session, on H. R. 18878, pp. 53–54.
9 Message of the President of the United States Transmitting the Budget for Service of the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1930, p.a131.
10 Hearings before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations in charge of Departments of State, Justice, Commerce, and Labor Appropriation Bill for 1930, Seventieth Congress, Second Session, pp. 5–12, 58, 66–68.
11 Hearings before Subcommittee, pp. 58–68.
12 Ibid, pp. 201–221.
13 Congressional Record, December 20, 1928, pp. 965–984Google Scholar.
14 U. S. Statutes at Large, 1927–1928, pt. i, pp. 64, 84, 327, 541, 643.
Comments
No Comments have been published for this article.