PREFACE It has not been the purpose to make this work a manual of diplomatic procedure, that field being already occupied by European publications. It is rather designed as a companion volume and complement of "A Century of American Diplomacy." As the latter sought to show the influence exerted by the United States in the framing and improvement of international law, the present work is intended, primarily, to set forth the part taken by American diplomatists in the elevation and purification of diplomacy; and, secondarily, to give in popular form, through such a narrative, the rules and procedure of diplomatic intercourse. While it is prepared for the general reader, numerous citations of authorities are given to enable the student to pursue his investigation by an examination of the original sources of inform ation. THE PRACTICE OF DIPLOMACY CHAPTER I UTILITY OF THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE In a previous volume I sought to show that the United States, in the first hundred years of its existence, has had a marked influence in shaping and improving international law. Its influence in elevating the diplomatic intercourse of nations has been scarcely less conspicuous. Our first plenipotentiary was distinguished for the frankness and simplicity of his conduct, and for his advanced and humane political views; our first President enjoined upon our foreign representatives high ideals and the avoidance of chicanery; and the last among our secretaries of state, whose lamented death is yet fresh in our memories, epitomized the diplomacy of the United States as the practical application of the Golden Rule. The fact that the United States began its career as an independent state with no national history behind it, and untrammeled by precedents and traditions, made it easier for its foreign agents to discard the devious methods of the then existing diplomacy, and to follow a more sincere and upright course. It was fortunate, also, that its earliest representatives to foreign courts |