be regarded as two parts of the same
agency, and for the first time diplomacy had begun to be a career with
possibilities. The practice of promoting able young secretaries to
chiefs of legation, begun by Roosevelt, had been widely extended by
Taft; and though the highest posts were still filled by wealthy
amateurs it seemed that at last the American diplomatic service offered
some attraction to an ambitious man. It was the general expectation in
Europe and still more in America that President Wilson, who by training
and inclination might be expected to approve of the elevation of
standards in the diplomatic service, would continue and extend this
work. Instead of that, he undid it, or rather permitted it to be
undone.

Mr. Bryan had of necessity been made Secretary of State, and it may be
supposed that there was equal necessity for opening up the diplomatic
service as a happy hunting ground for the Bryan men--"deserving
Democrats," as Mr. Bryan called them in a famous letter. The chief
European posts, to which the Taft Administration had not begun to apply
the merit system, were filled chiefly by Mr. Wilson's own nominees.
These included several well-known men of letters, and with one or
two exceptions the amateur diplomats serving as the heads of the
missions in Europe did satisfactory and even brilliant service
under the unprecedented strain which the war brought on them. The
service in Latin America, however, which Knox had almost entirely
professionalized, was given over bodily to personal followers of Bryan.
In what was in 1913 perhaps the most important of our diplomatic posts,
the embassy to Mexico, Mr. Wilson was compelled to rely provisionally
on Henry Lane Wilson, a holdover appointee from the previous
Administration.

It was soon made clear that there was to be no more dollar diplomacy.
The Knox policies in Central America were dropped--although American
troops continued to dominate Nicaragua--and in 1914 the Administration
successfully discouraged American participation in a six-power loan to
China. The Russo-Japanese absorption of Manchuria was to be treated as
the accomplished fact that it was; and in general the policy of the new
Administration was anything but aggressive. It would not use diplomacy
to advance American commercial interests, nor was it prepared to accept
the assistance of American financiers in promoting the policies of
diplomacy.

But it was evident from the outset that the most quies