vi Introductory Note to Volume II 
to the public. Since the earliest days of modern French 
diplomacy it has been the practice of the Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs to set up a confidential dossier for each official 
in its employ, in which, identified only by the names of the 
officials concerned, were filed various documents of a private 
nature. Normally included were birth certificates, copies of 
various official commissions, data on salaries, pensions, and 
honors, recommendations, complaints, and papers illustrative 
of the services rendered France in various capacities by the 
individual officials. The general rule of the Foreign Office 
with regard to these dossiers , irrespective of date, has been 
to treat them as completely confidential and entirely closed 
to investigators. Occasionally specific items of information 
will be obtained from them by the archives staff for the 
convenience of historians and others. In very rare instances 
investigators have been allowed personally to consult one or 
more specific dossiers of ancient date concerned with indi- 
viduals who were members of families now extinct. 
Official inventories for part of the archives of the 
Ministry have been published between 1883 and 1919 as follows: 
Inventaire sommaire des Archives du Departement 
des Affaires Etrangeres 
CI] Memoires et Documents: France (1883). 
[II] Memoires et Documents: Fonds divers (1892). 
[Ill] Memoires et Documents: Fonds France et Fonds 
divers (1896) . 
[IV] Correspondance politique: I. Allemagne, Angleterre, 
Argentine, Autriche (1903). 
[V] Correspondance politique: II. (1) Bade, Bale, 
Baviere, Br6sil, Brunswick-Hanovre, Chili, Cologne, 
Colombie, Corse, Danemark, Dantzig (1908). 
[VI] Correspondance politique: II. (2) Espagne (1919). 
The volume describing the Correspondance politique . Etats 
Unis , has long been in proof and it has been possible to make 
use of it, but it has not yet been published. 
