I regret very much to say, that notwithstanding Senator Beveridge's prior anxiety to become a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, after his appointment he attended very few meetings and apparently took little interest in its business. His duties as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, combined with work on other committees, necessarily consumed most of his time.
For a number of years after the Hon. John Kean, of New Jersey, entered the Senate, I had no special acquaintance with him, and I did not welcome him particularly when he was made a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, in 1901. Since then I have become very intimate with Senator Kean, and there have been few men on the committee for whom I entertained a higher regard, or in whom I placed more confidence. He was a very industrious and useful member, as he is in the Senate. He filled quite a prominent place in the Senate, and watched legislation probably more closely than any other member. He was always familiar with the bills on the calendar, and made it a point to object to any questionable measures that came before the Senate. He advanced in influence and power very rapidly in the last few years of his service. Through Senator Kean, I have been enabled very often to expedite the passage of measures, not only coming from the Committee on Foreign Relations, but bills in which I have been interested pertaining to the affairs of my own State. If the Senate had what is known as a "whip," I would say that Senator Kean comes more nearly being the Republican "whip" than any other Senator, with the possible exception, in recent years, of Senator Murray Crane, of Massachusetts.
Senator Thomas H. Carter, of Montana, a member of the committee in the Sixty-first Congress, was one of the most popular members of the Senate. His ability as a lawyer and legislator, combined with his wit and keen sense of humor, enabled him to assume quite a commanding position in that body. When feeling ran high in debate, sometimes almost to the point of personal encounter, Senator Carter would appear, and by a few well-chosen words, voiced in his calm, quiet manner, throw oil upon the troubled waters, and peace again reigned supreme.
I have known Senator Carter for very many years. I knew him as a young man. His home was at one time in Illinois, at the little town of Pana, about twenty-five miles from my own home at Springfield. He has held many public offices. Delegate from the Territory of Montana, member of the Fifty-first Congress, Commissioner of the General Land Office, Senator from 1895 to 1901 and from 1905 to 1906, Chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1892, he has in all these positions distinguished himself as a man of a high order of ability. I have always liked Senator Carter very much, and I was glad indeed that he was named a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations. He is a very useful and influential member, as he is of the Senate.
Senator William Alden Smith, of Michigan, was only recently placed on the Committee on Foreign Relations, quite a distinction for a Senator who had served for so brief a time as a member of the Senate. Senator Smith, however, was a prominent member of the House for many years, and was elected to the Senate while serving as a member of the House of Representatives. He has taken position in the Senate very rapidly. He is a lawyer of experience and long practice, and an industrious and competent legislator. He is always watchful of the interests of his State. He took a prominent part in the consideration of the treaties between the United States and Great Britain concerning Canada, more especially the boundary and water-way treaties. It was through his efforts that an amendment to the latter treaty was adopted, which he considered necessary to protect the interests of his State, and which I greatly feared would result in the rejection of the treaty by the Canadian Parliament. I am very glad to say, however, that the treaty has been ratified by both Governments, and only recently proclaimed.
Senator Smith has taken a keen interest in matters before the Committee on Foreign Relations, and with his experience, industry, and capacity, he is bound to become a very useful member of the committee.
One of the last members to be appointed on the Committee on Foreign Relations was the Hon. Elihu Root, of New York. He is one of the greatest men and ablest Senators who have ever been members of the committee. When he became a member of it, he was not at all a stranger, for the reason that he, on my invitation, had, while Secretary of State, for two years previous to his retirement from that office, attended almost every meeting of the committee. Between Mr. Hay and the members of the Senate, there was not the close relationship which should have existed between that body and the State Department.
Secretary Hay was not disposed to cultivate friendly relations with Senators, and certain remarks he made concerning the Senate as a body were very distasteful to Senators; and although I had invited him, he seemed very averse to coming before the Committee on Foreign Relations. I did not press the point. The result was that important treaties and other matters were constantly sent in, with which the members of the committee were not familiar, and we had to grope in the dark, as it were, and inform ourselves concerning them as best we could.
But when Mr. Root became Secretary of State, I resolved to insist that the Secretary meet with us from time to time, and explain such treaties and measures as might need explanation, and upon which the Administration was anxious to secure favorable action. In other words, there should be closer relationship between the Committee on Foreign Relations and the State Department than had formerly existed. I first saw President Roosevelt and told him I hoped Mr. Root would come before the committee as occasion might require. The President seemed at once impressed with the propriety of the proposed plan, and remarked in his own characteristic fashion: "That is just the thing." I then saw Mr. Root, whom I knew very well as Secretary of War, and he was more than pleased with the suggestion, asserting that it was just what he wanted to do. It so happened that during his administration of the State Department he found it necessary to negotiate more treaties, and treaties of greater importance, than any of his more recent predecessors in that high office, and he became so constant and punctual in his attendance at the meetings of the committee that we grew almost to regard him as a regular member, even before he entered the Senate.
He has served on the committee but two sessions, but even in that short time he has proved his fitness to fill the gap left by the retirement of Senators Spooner and Foraker. As a lawyer he is as brilliant as either of those men, and probably, owing to his executive experience, a more efficient statesman. I regard him as the best qualified man in this country for any position in the public service which he would accept. He would make a strong President, and as a Senator he is equipped with extraordinary qualifications. If he remains in the Senate, by sheer force of ability alone he is bound to become its acknowledged leader. We have never had a stronger Secretary of State. Mr. Hay was a very great man in many respects, and could handle an international question, especially pertaining to the Far East, with more skill than any of his predecessors; but Mr. Root, while probably not as well versed in diplomacy as Mr. Hay, is one of the foremost lawyers in America, and has the faculty of going into the minutest details of every question, large or small, even to the extent of reorganizing all the multitude of details of the State Department. He was the real head of the department, and supervised every matter coming before it.