MANY COLLEGE GRADUATES NOW IN FOREIGN SERVICE

Speaking very generally, our Foreign Service today is divided into two practically water-tight compartments--the diplomatic side and the consular side. Speaking equally generally, the former has to do with questions involving international relationships and diplomacy, and the second has to do with the foreign trade of the United States.

Very many college men are now in each service. Take, for example, the diplomatic service. At the head, and in each capital of the world, are the Ambassadors and Ministers the official spokesmen of the nation in the respective countries to which they are accredited. Below them is a force of Diplomatic Secretaries who are charged with the function of performing the routine tasks of the particular mission at which they are serving, and, on occasion, of acting as Chief of Mission during the absence of their Ambassador or Minister. The secretaries are divided into four classes. The men of the first class are those who have worked up through the lower grades of the service and who are naturally the most experienced and most skilled in the problems with which they have to deal. On the 1st of January of this year, there were 20 secretaries in the first class; 14 of the 20 were graduates of Yale, the University, or Princeton; a 15th was trained at the Graduate School. All the other five, as well, are college graduates, being the product respectively of West Point, Lehigh, Lebanon, Dartmouth and Tulane.

Thus today a college education is a virtual necessity for the attaining of high rank in the Diplomatic Service. This is natural, for the equipment of education and of languages, both absolutely essential for a proper performance of the duties of the position, is ordinarily found only in the college graduate. The preponderance of graduates of Yale, Princeton, and the University, in the secretaries of the first class--and speaking generally, the same situation prevails among the other three classes--indicates conclusively that the type of men and type of education found at these universities is peculiarly fitted for a diplomatic career. On the other hand--and speaking as a Harvard man--I think the predominance of men from the three great universities is, on the whole, unfortunate. I believe that the Diplomatic Service should be more representative of every section of the country, of every type and of every walk in life than it is today.

Three Questions to Consider

The question is at once naturally asked by a college man looking about for a career as to the opportunity which the Diplomatic Service now affords. There are ordinarily three questions that such a man is apt to ask concerning a possible profession or occupation; first, is it permanent; second, what is the salary; and third, what are the opportunities for promotion?

Answering these in turn it must be said that the Diplomatic Service, as at present constituted, cuts rather a sorry figure. The service is tolerably permanent for first-rate men, but neither the promotion possibilities nor the salaries are particularly attractive. As to promotion, the practice has been to allow a good man to work up to first secretary and let him languish there. The natural promotion thence would be to Ambassador or Minister. But these places have far too often been reserved for political friends of the Administration in power. Frequently, the appointees, especially in the last few years, have been most unfitted for their position either by character, education or experience. This has resulted in the Secretaryships becoming a "blind alley" occupation, which in itself naturally repels the highest quality of entrant.

Furthermore, the starting salary is only $1500 and the salary of a first secretary is at present only $3000. When we consider that the first secretaries now in the service have served at least eight years and some of them as long as 15 years, and when we remember that there is no certainty of worth-while promotion even to the best men, it is no wonder that the State Department is today having difficulty in recruiting vacancies with men of pre-eminent fitness for the important duties which the service involves Indeed, the wonder is not that the service today is not better but that it is as good as it is.

Nevertheless, no occupation can have a pfore urgent appeal, in itself, to the college graduate even if he plans to remain in it for only a few years. He see much of the world in the most attractive way and under the most agreeable auspices. He has an opportunity to expand his knowledge of world affairs and his familiarity with modern languages. In a very real sense he is enabled to play a part--and often a very important part--in the making of current history.

What the New Bill Proposes

With those advantages, the question naturally arises why the Government does not remove the obvious disadvantages to which I have alluded. At this moment there is pending in Congress a bill which I have drafted and which is intended to put the service upon an efficiency basis. In the first place, there is no reason for the complete disassociation of the diplomatic and consular sides of the foreign service. It would be useful for the service and useful to the individual if a secretary should be enabled for a time at least, to perform the duties of consul and vice versa. Often times a poor secretary would be a good consul and quite as often a poor consul might prove an excellent secretary. The pending plan proposes the possibility of an exchange, at the pleasure of the Secretary of State, between the two sides of the service. This is done simply by standardizing the grades of the consular service and of the secretaries so as to make a secretary of any given grade interchangeable with a consul of a certain grade. As a corollary to this I propose a much more liberal salary scale for the secretaries. At present, consuls receive from $2500 to $12,000. I propose that hereafter secretaries shall receive up to $8000 instead of, as now, only up to $3000. The importance of their work and the caliber of man demanded imperatively calls for a reasonably adequate compensation.

In the second place, I propose that it shall be made as nearly obligatory and possible--bearing in mind constitutional limitations, that the President shall promote efficient secretaries and consuls to vacancies arising in the rank of Minister. If this is done it will give the incentive which is now absent for ambitious men to enter the service with the full realization that successful secreteries or consuls may hope in time to a rive at the important and responsible position of Minister, and later, Ambassador. It will also remove from party politics these places and indirectly eliminate one of those stains which has, for many years, frequently marred our foreign service.

Universities as the Training Ground

In the third place, I propose a training period, at the expense of the Government, and to be given at one or more of our larger universities, by means in which aspirants for the diplomatic or consular service may receive an intensive training of two or three years which should adequately equip them for their duties. Diplomacy and consular work both involve difficult, technical, and important duties. The men who now enter the service are usually entirely untrained and unequipped. They have to be "broken in." Much greater initial efficiency will result if this is done by trained educators than if they have to pick it up as best they can as they go along. In other words, I propose to apply to the foreign service the analog which West Point and Annapolis bear to our Army and Navy.

If this program goes through--and I am extremely hopeful that it will-- our foreign service will be still more worth while for the college graduate than it is today. I know of no more useful function that a college graduate can perform than that involved in promoting the introduction of business methods into our international relationships.

I have not been able, within the limits of this article, to discuss in detail the consular service. It is even today on a much more solid footing than our diplomatic service. The salary range, as I have said, is much higher. The positions from the highest to the lowest have, since President Roosevelt's day, been filled entirely without regard to partisan or political considerations. And a first-rate consul can ordinarily stay in the service, gradually moving up, as long as he likes.

The college graduate will always necessarily constitute the backbone of our foreign service. I hope and believe that college men generally, will recognize the weaknesses of the present system, the importance of improving it, and the case with which concerted action will bring about the few necessary reforms. I have already received much assistance from college men in my program, and I have taken peculiar pleasure in preparing this article because I hope that from it may result an added measure of cooperation