Uncle Sam Abroad

What is the attitude of Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia or the United States upon this or that question?

Such a query you often hear, and perhaps you stop to wonder how it is when the collective opinion of any one country cannot be known in a short time, that there can be such a thing as a German attitude, an English or an American attitude, or who has a right to determine upon this or that as our attitude.

Well, it is evident that in domestic affairs, that is to say in national affairs, we as a people can take time to deliberate and choose our path; and it is just as evident that in international affairs we cannot always do so. “It is the unexpected that happens”, and we must have some means of meeting emergencies that will not wait. Hence a free people is least free, theoretically, when it has to do with the claims of treaties and international law, for it cannot take time to consider and decide upon all the facts; nay, even legislatures may interfere seriously with the proper discharge of such duties; so that in actual practice, even the most democratic nations have found it best to entrust the management of foreign affairs, or in other words, the preservation of their national equilibrium, to a Premier, Chancellor or Foreign Secretary, who is generally the ablest statesman that the country can afford.

This officer, with slightly differing functions, is known in our country as the Secretary of State, and he presides over the State Department. Probably there is no office under our Constitution that requires greater sagacity, greater breadth of intellectual grasp and practical training than this one of Secretary of State, and the fact that it has been held by such men as Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, William H. Seward and James G. Blaine is sufficient evidence of its importance.

It was intended at first that the cabinet officers should be as nearly equal as possible, and the salaries were fixed and remain the same to this day; but in the nature of the case they could not remain of equal importance, for the Department of State is more intimately associated with the President than any other. Washington would not allow foreign ministers to address him—they must reach him properly through the State Department,—hence, if for no other reason, it is easy to see how the Secretary of State assumed an official dignity that does not belong to the other cabinet officers.

Let us see how he stands related to the general government. Suppose we assume the attitude of an intelligent foreigner, looking at the “Great Republic” from the outside, and trying to discover into whose hands the logical working out of the Constitution has placed the real power.