Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T19:21:31.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Unified Foreign Service

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Samuel MacClintock
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Our government maintains a large and expensive foreign service. The business interests of the country recognize the value of adequate representation abroad and support vigorously measures intended to improve and expand this field. For the fiscal year 1922–23 Congress has increased the appropriations for this branch of the public service while cutting down almost all domestic expenditures.

Our service in the foreign field has only one rival in its completeness and effectiveness, and that naturally is Great Britain's. Before the war comparison was often made with Germany, France, Japan and other nations, and critics could point to individual excellencies in all of these; but they in turn were generous in praise of our service and generally accorded it first rank, especially on its promotional side. The one outstanding weakness of this service at the present time is its lack of unity, resulting in duplicate activities, rivalries, uncertainties to those using the service and needless expense to the taxpayers.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , November 1922 , pp. 600 - 611
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1922

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The appropriation for the bureau of foreign and domestic commerce alone for the year 1922–23 is $1,669,310 and is about 30 per cent larger than for the previous year.

2 For dealing with the debts due us from the Allies a special commission was set up by Congress, composed of the secretaries of the treasury, state and commerce, as well as presidential appointees.

3 In the spring of 1922 there were 202 American consuls in Europe, 85 in Asia, 23 in Africa, 33 in South America, 11 in Central America, 63 in North America, 23 in the West Indies, and 17 in Australasia.

4 The Rogers Bill, of September 1, 1922, provides that all appointments shall be by commission to a class and not to any particular post, and that hereafter the diplomatic and consular services shall be known as the foreign service of the United States.

5 While theoretically possible, practically the question as to why there should not be one central department in which would be combined all our foreign activities and interests, is never discussed. The Brown committee on the reorganization of government departments is said to contemplate shifting, combining or eliminating a number of bureaus and divisions, within the various departments as now organized, but has never considered, apparently, setting up a separate foreign department, or grouping all foreign activities within one of the existing departments. Perhaps the basic reasons for a continuance along present lines arises from the fact that, functionally, these activities are so dissimilar in character that throwing them together into one department would not create any closer organic relationship, or any better control. Some of these foreign activities are purely commercial and promotional; some are fiscal; some political. They are so wide apart in their fundamental character as to make grouping into a single department of very doubtful value, to say nothing of the difficulty of overcoming long established organization lines and procedure.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.