ng a public minister
therefrom. The latter is the usual and proper course. Diplomatic
relations with a new power are properly, and customarily inaugurated at
the request of that power, expressed through an envoy sent for the
purpose. The reception of this envoy, as pointed out, is the act of the
President alone. The next step, that of sending a public minister to the
nation thus recognized, is primarily the act of the President. The
Senate can take no part in it at all, until the President has sent in a
nomination. Then it acts in its executive capacity, and, customarily, in
'executive session.' The legislative branch of the Government can
exercise no influence over this step except, very indirectly, by
withholding appropriations. * * * Nor can the legislative branch of the
Government hold any communications with foreign nations. The executive
branch is the sole mouthpiece of the nation in communication with
foreign sovereignties. Foreign nations communicate only through their
respective executive departments. Resolutions of their legislative
departments upon diplomatic matters have no status in international law.
In the department of international law, therefore, properly speaking, a
Congressional recognition of belligerency or independence would be a
nullity. * * * Congress can help the Cuban insurgents by legislation in
many ways, but it cannot help them legitimately by mere declarations, or
by attempts to engage in diplomatic negotiations, if our interpretation
of the Constitution is correct. That it is correct * * * [is] shown by
the opinions of jurists and statesmen of the past."[348] Congress was
able ultimately to bundle a clause recognizing the independence of Cuba,
as distinguished from its government, into the declaration of war of
April 11, 1898 against Spain. For the most part, the sponsors of the
clause defended it by the following line of reasoning. Diplomacy, they
said, was now at an end and the President himself had appealed to
Congress to provide a solution for the Cuban situation. In response
Congress was about to exercise its constitutional power of declaring
war, and it has consequently the right to state the purpose of the war
which it was about to declare.[349] The recognition of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics in 1933 was an exclusively Presidential act.

THE POWER OF NONRECOGNITION

The potentialities of nonrecognition were conspicuously illustrated by
President Woodrow Wilson when he