SECTION B DIPLOMACY 



(Hall 1, September 23, 3. p. m.) 



SPEAKERS: HONORABLE JOHN W. FOSTER, Ex-Secretary of State. 



HONORABLE DAVID JAYNE HILL, Minister of the United States to 

 Switzerland. 



THE PROPER GRADE OF DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIVES 



BY JOHN WATSON FOSTER 



[John Watsoa Foster, Lawyer, Washington, D. C. b. Pike County, Indiana, 

 March 2, 1836. A.B., A.M. Indiana University, 1855; LL.D. Wabash College, 

 Princeton and Yale Universities. United States Minister to Mexico, 1873-80; 

 to Russia, 1880-81; to Spain, 1883-85; Special Ambassador to Russia, 1897; 

 President of National Arbitration Conference, 1904-05. Member of Washing- 

 ton Academy of Sciences; President of Washington Archeological Society, etc. 

 Author of various magazine articles and diplomatic subjects; also many books.] 



IN the letter inviting me to speak on this occasion, I have been 

 requested to prepare a paper on present problems in diplomacy. 



Had I been asked to treat of present problems in international 

 law, I would have found a wide field open for our consideration. 

 That branch of jurisprudence is a progressive science. Old theories, 

 such as mare clausum and the three-mile ocean limit, are being 

 discarded or modified by the changing conditions of commerce and 

 invention, and new principles are sought to be introduced into the 

 code of nations. The question of the exemption of private property 

 from seizure on the high seas in time of war, advocated more than 

 a hundred years ago, is still under discussion and likely at no distant 

 day to be accepted by the nations. The practice of blockade has 

 undergone marked changes in the past century, and the theory of 

 peaceful blockade is under present-day discussion. Modern warfare 

 has created new questions. It is requiring a revision of the contra- 

 band list and a more accurate definition of the rights of neutral 

 ports, accepting more humane methods, and raising new topics, as 

 the use of mines on the high seas and the proper restrictions as to 

 wireless telegraphy. 



But in diplomacy, strictly so-called, we find few topics of present- 

 day discussion. The one which I consider of most importance is 

 that to which I ask your attention the proper grade of diplomatic 

 representatives. 



International law is of modern origin and recent growth, the at- 

 tempt at its codification only dating to the seventeenth century, 

 and it scarcely came to be recognized as binding upon nations before 



