120 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
ness, or the sacrifice of the just position of our country, or of the 
self-respect of its citizens. 
A special reason for the maintenance of an organized diplomatic 
service is found in the need of making or modifying treaties. Here 
it is that a minister permanently residing at a foreign court has a 
decided advantage. He notes the progress of affairs, watches for 
oppportunities, makes the acquaintance of statesmen and other men 
of influence in the country to which he is accredited, and is thus 
able to suggest and to secure treaties and modifications of treaties 
much earlier and more easily than could possibly be done from the 
center of a distant government. Even if special commissioners be 
sent to make a treaty, a resident representative is sure to be of the 
utmost value. ys 
An excellent example is seen in the late George Bancroft during 
his career as Minister of the United States at Berlin—a career 
which lasted about eight years. 
Up to his time, Germans who had become American citizens and 
afterward revisited their own country were constantly liable to 
arrest or annoyance with reference to their military and other 
duties to the country of their birth: there was then a frequent asser- 
tion in all parts of Europe of the old principle, “once a subject, 
always a subject,” and the result was very great hardship to large 
numbers of worthy men, great distress to many families, and con- 
stant danger of hostile relations between our own country and 
various German states; relations which might have resulted in seri- 
ous injury to our manufactures and commerce, costing us in a few 
months a far greater sum than our diplomatic establishment would 
cost in many years. 
In the struggle between Prussia and Austria, which led to the 
establishment of the North German Confederation, and in the re- 
sultant desire of Prussia for a friendly attitude of the United States, 
Mr. Bancroft saw his opportunity. He secured with much labor 
and skill, concessions which at any other time would have been with- 
held. The German government maintained that permission to Ger- 
man-Americans to return and remain in Germany had led to a 
wretched prostitution of American citizenship; that great numbers 
of young men, just about arriving at the military age, had no sooner 
been naturalized in the United States than they hurried back to their 
fatherland, claiming the privileges of both countries, but discharging 
the duties of neither. In the treaties now obtained, the right of 
the former subjects of various German states naturalized in our own 
country to revisit the place of their birth, was defined, and most 
