It may seem rather strange to speak of one of our officials as the chief social functionary in our governmental machinery, but we have such a one, and he is no other than the Secretary of State. The office of functionary host for the government might be supposed to belong naturally to the President, who is spared this duty, however, owing to the multiplicity of others that are unavoidable. Consequently the Secretary of State, because of the breadth of the field of his operations, bringing him into touch with representatives of other nations as well as the principal statesmen of our own, and because, moreover, diplomacy’s natural atmosphere has always been that of society, must “keep open house”, as it were, for the Republic. This alone would be a sufficient burden for any one man, but it is expected that the Assistant Secretaries of State shall share it with him. Thus our Secretary maintains the only semblance of a court that will be tolerated by our “fierce democracie”, and even for this we do not contribute a cent of support, though around it and through it operate vast interests, both national and international. It is a manifest injustice to these officials that we do not provide for such legitimate expenses as must necessarily occur on these semi-official, semi-social occasions.

Now let us see what is the scope of the State Department, for it is much more than a foreign office, though that is its principle function. It embraces the duties which in other countries are given to the Keeper of the Seal, the Minister of Justice, etc., such as—

Its scope is more particularly indicated by the bureaus into which it is divided, namely,—

Each of these bureaus is presided over by a chief, and at the head of them all is the chief clerk, who is “the executive officer of the Department of State under the direction of the Secretary.”

The Bureau of Indexes and Archives is a sort of postoffice and recorder’s office combined, for it receives the incoming mail, opens it and classifies it as either diplomatic, consular or miscellaneous, then indexes it so that if necessary it can be readily traced, and then turns over to the Chief Clerk the diplomatic correspondence and the more important consular and miscellaneous correspondence. This the Chief Clerk reads, and the most important is submitted to the Assistant Secretaries of State, while the remainder is turned over to the various bureaus for their attention. Likewise after the Secretary and his Assistants have signified the replies which are to be made to the most important of the mail and have examined and signed the same, it is collected from all the bureaus, and the out-going mail is indexed in another set of books.