WRIGHT— CONTROL OF FOREIGN RELATIONS. 453 



Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Sen- 

 ate Committee on Foreign Relations. The President, sitting with 

 these five officials, together with the Secretaries of State, Treasury, 

 War, Navy, Commerce and the Attorney-General, would form a 

 Cabinet capable of reaching decisions on foreign affairs likely to 

 secure cooperation from all departments of the government and yet 

 not too large to do business. ^^ 



Closer relations might also be established by the President with 

 Congress and especially with the Senate through personal delivery 

 of messages and explanations of his policy, but always at his ini- 

 tiative.^^ The present practice, whereby Congress does not *' di- 

 rect '' the Secretary of State to submit papers and information as it 

 does other cabinet officers but requests the real head of the depart- 

 ment, the President of the United States, "to submit matters if, in 

 his judgment, not incompatible with the public interest," must be 

 maintained.^® 



Finally, close informal relations between the President and con- 

 gressional committees on foreign affairs should exist, here again 

 at the President's initiative. President Madison was right, as Sen- 

 ator Lodge pointed out in 1906, in refusing to receive a Senate com- 

 mittee sent on command of that body to interview him with refer- 

 ence to an appointment of a minister to Sweden. ^^ But the Pres- 



34 The writer owes this suggestion to Professor John A. Fairlie. 



35 " Rule XXXVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate still provides the 

 manner in which the President is to meet the Senate in executive session. 

 Henry Cabot Lodge, in referring to the recognition in this rule of the right 

 of the President to meet with the Senate in consideration of treaties, said in 

 the United States Senate, January 24, 1906: 'Yet I think we should be dis- 

 posed to resent it if a request of that sort was made to us by the President.' 

 Cong. Rec, SQth Cong., ist sess., 1470" (Crandall, op. cit., p. 68, note 5). 

 But see remarks of Senator Bacon, supra, sec. 176. President Wilson revived 

 the custom in abeyance since the time of John Adams of appearing in person 

 before Congress for the delivery of formal messages. 



38 Supra, sec. 234. 



3^ " In the administration of Mr. Madison the Senate deputed a committee 

 to see him in regard to the appointment of a minister to Sweden, and he 

 replied that he could recognize no committee of the Senate, that his relations 

 were exclusively with the Senate." Senator Lodge of Massachusetts, Jan. 23, 

 1906, Cong. Rcc, 40: 1420, quoted Corwin, op. cit., pp. 174-175. 



