Mr. CARR. We are to a considerable extent, of course, protected against that by our system, by which we depend upon young men of ample means to enter the service, and therefore they are not swayed by those considerations, as underpaid clerks in Government departments who have no other means might be.

Mr. MOORES. How many of these secretaries are away from their post and attached to the department here in Washington? You have roving secretaries, have you not?

Mr. CARR. Well, we bring some of them here to the department as part of our regular scheme of management.

Mr. MOORES. How many have you there now, approximately?

Mr. CARR. I can not tell you, but I imagine we have six or eight, anyway, and perhaps more.

Mr. MOORES. How many traveling secretaries have you?

Mr. CARR. Traveling secretaries?

Mr. MOORES. Yes.

Mr. CARR. None. They are all stationed at posts, unless they happen to be on duty here at the department. And I may say here that the State Department would have broken down during the war if it had not been for the fact that we drafted a number of secretaries to come back here and help in the department. We had a number of secretaries and also a number of consular officers come back and help, and that was the only thing that saved the department from going to pieces.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Carr, is this one of the conditions resulting from the unattractive nature of the service to large groups of men, namely, that it is so difficult to build up the service as vacancies arise, and consequently it is so important not to lose the good men that you have that you can not exact of the good men now in the service the discipline that you could exact in case you had a seething mass of excellent material waiting to get into the service?

Mr. CARR. Certainly; that is absolutely true.

Mr. ROGERS. I was told the other day, for instance, of a good secretary who had been working hard and was tired, and he announced that he was going off to hunt big game and would be gone for six months. He could not very well be spared, but he said they could either have him at the end of six months or not have him at all. And, consequently, the department felt obliged to yield, because he absolutely could not be replaced.

Mr. CARR. That is absolutely true. The department has very little, if any, independence at all with regard to the secretaries in the service.

Mr. ROGERS. Now, to get back to my original inquiry: I think the members of the committee, and you probably will agree, that precision in legislation is desirable up to a certain point, at least. Now, if you have authority under this language to oppoint 78 secretaries at $6,000 and no others, or 180 secretaries at $2,500 and no others, it seems to me that the latitude is much greater than you need. Is there any objection that you know of to simply incorporate in this bill the table which you have given the committee-20 secretaries, of the first class, at $6,000 a year $120,000 or whatever the scale might be?

Mr. CARR. Yes; I personally see some objections to that, Mr. Rogers.

Mr. HOUGHTON. That would leave you without any flexibility, I suppose?

Mr. CARR. During the war, which was our supreme test, of course, of running the service, if we had not had the flexibility that we have now I do not know what we should have done. It was only the fact that Congress left an enormous amount of latitude in the hands of the Secretary of State that enabled us to go through the war with both branches of the service as successfully as we did. Where it was necessary we could increase the number of men in a class; that was particularly true in the case of the Consular Service because occasionally we would need a consular officer somewhere and could not have sent him without much delay if we had not had so much latitude. If you had specified in the legislation that so many consular officers had to be in particular places we could not have met the situation, except after long delay, which was utterly impracticable. It is a tremendous advantage to have the power to change the number in those classes if it is necessary, and personally I think that you should leave as much latitude in the hands of the executive as possible, to be checked absolutely by an accounting at the next session of Congress of the manner in which that authority has been exercised. In other words, it seems to me that it ought to be relatively immaterial to Congress whether it specifies in the bill that there shall be so many secretaries, for example, in a certain class, or whether it leaves that to the judgment of the Secretary of State, on condition that the Secretary of State comes before this committee at the next session of Congress and says, "Gentlemen, I exercised this authority which you gave me in this, that, or the other way. I kept so many secretaries in this class, that class, and the other class;" and with that understanding you are likely to get almost no misuse of the authority. You are likely to leave a great deal of very commendable latitude in the hands of the Secretary.

Mr. ROGERS. That theory as applied to its logical conclusion would mean a three-line bill, reading something like this: "For foreign intercourse, 1921, $11,443,000," would it not?

Mr. CARR. Yes, but

Mr. HOUGHTON. Well, is that not substantially what we vote on anyhow? [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Carr, you are basing your reasoning on war conditions, are you not?

Mr. CARR. I am basing my reasoning on war conditions, Mr. Chairman; but I do think that we learned a very great many useful facts about administration during the war as affecting our department.

The CHAIRMAN. I grant the necessity of great flexibility in times of war; but do you need it in times of peace?

Mr. CARR. At the beginning of the war, when we most needed latitude, we could not have got it, probably. Fortunately, we had an enormous amount of latitude in the foreign service in the beginning. If we had not had that, we would have gone on the rocks in the first year of the war without any doubt.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, do you think Congress would have declined to help you as an emergency measure?

Mr. CARR. Possibly not. But I am particularly emphasizing the loss of time that occurs between the beginning of a certain condition

and the time when you get legislation, ordinarily, on details of this

sort.

Mr. CONNALLY. May I ask you one question along that line? A moment ago you stated that in classifying these secretaries you had a system of selection, largely, instead of seniority?

Mr. CARR. That is my understanding; yes, sir.

Mr. CONNALLY. What I want to inquire is, have you any welldefined policy by which those selections are made, or is it purely an arbitrary selection?

Mr. CARR. Well, of course, it is based on several considerations.

Mr. CONNALLY. That is what I was getting at. In the first place, there is kept a record of the service of each man, a personal record card?

Mr. CARR. A personal record card is kept, which embraces the opinions of the different chiefs under whom he serves, and any complaints that may be made against him, as well as any commendations that may be made in respect to him.

Mr. CONNALLY. That is what I was inquiring about.

Mr. CARR. That is the foundation of the judgment of the Secretary of State in making promotions.

Mr. CONNALLY. In other words, the immediate superior of the secretary comments on his services, and if he is transferred to another chief, that man also comments on him?

Mr. CARR. He also comments on him. Every head of a mission is expected-I think it is once a year-to send in a written statement in regard to the efficiency of every subordinate under him.

Mr. CONNALLY. That is what I was getting at, to see whether you had a personal record system in effect.

Mr. CARR. Yes. That is true also of the Consular Service, where we have the additional safeguard that there is a corps of inspectors who go to each place and report periodically upon the office and personnel.

Mr. MOORES. Mr. Carr, I think every member of this committee understands the arguments in favor of flexibility. But any bill that we present will meet opposition. A very large majority of both sides of the House believe that the lump-sum appropriations to the Food Administration, the Fuel Administration, and other branches of the Government service during the war were abused; and we have got to meet the hostility growing out of that.

I wish you would write us a letter stating, as forcibly as you can, the reasons for the desirability of flexibility in the matter of secretaries and their pay.

Mr. CARR. In times of peace?

Mr. MOORES. In times of peace, so that the chairman may be protected on the floor of the House. We have got to meet a very bitter hostility to lump-sum appropriations.

Mr. CARR. I can well understand that. There is no one more sincerely anxious to help in a proper solution of that sort of problem than I am. Several years ago the Secretary of State adopted a certain form of financial report very largely for the purpose of not only himself keeping faith with Congress but of forcing all of his subordinates to keep faith with Congress. Now, every winter we submit to Congress a written report setting forth most minutely the manner in which the appropriations which Congress has given the Secretary

of State have been spent. We take up each embassy and legation and each consulate and tell how much has been spent for heat and light and mesenger, telephone, telegraph, rent, and all that sort of thing. We take up all the salaries attached to each office. In other words, we take up every appropriation that we have and the details of how that appropriation has been used, and it is possible at the beginning of the session after the close of the fiscal year for Congress to see exactly what is done and usually in time to check it up against the appropriations for the next year, so that if there has been anything done that is not approved by Congress there is opportunity to require an explanation and to make such correction of the procedure as may be necessary.

Mr. LINTHICUM. I was just thinking of the point Mr. Rogers and Mr. Moores make against this lump-sum appropriation. In the six years I have been a member of this committee we have appropriated an unexpended balance in various funds, and I do not think there are more than half the Members on the floor of Congress who knew what that unexpended balance was. I doubt if members of the committee knew and yet it has been going through session after session without any question of it. I think that if we want to ascertain these things and get them down to a fixed basis, if we are going to arrange this same question, as Mr. Rogers suggests, it seems to me the measure ought to be arranged because that is more questionable and we appropriate a particular sum of money for a particular thing together with the unexpended balance, and nobody knows except in the report from the department what it is. We have been going along taking it on faith that the department has acted properly and economically and it has always done so. I think it has been too economical and parsimonious in many of these cases. I believe if we could expend more money abroad and give more service to the people it would be far better than trying to limit the small salaries and things of that kind. I am very much interested in trying to give every service abroad because in the Consular Service it carries itself, and this question of the passport bureau at Paris, I think that carries its own expense. There is no reason why we should not give the very best service and if we are going to face this as to the secretaries we ought to face that other question of unexpended balances and let the House know exactly what we are doing.

Mr. CARR. I am very glad to hear you say what you do in regard to the modesty of the requests of the Department of State as a general proposition in reference to appropriations, because there is one thing that has been very evident all the way through, the Department of State has never been since this war began at any time quite generous enough in its requests to Congress for money. It has always underestimated rather than overestimated.

The CHAIRMAN. I agree with that, Mr. Carr, except as to that one matter down in Cuba.

Mr. CARR. That is a matter of opinion, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LINTHICUM. As to the Cubans, it seems to me Cuba stands out alone as far as I can observe. I was noticing in the papers the other day a picture of a magnificent palace for the President of Cuba, and if you go up here and see the Cuban embassay building, it is a splendid structure. It seems to me that the Cubans are trying to do things

on a big scale, and probably for that reason the department thinks we ought to be doing things on a big scale.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us proceed with the next item.

Mr. CARR. On page 4, lines 15, 17, 19, 21, and 24, and page 5, line 1: Japanese secretary (interpreter) of embassy to Japan, $3,600; Turkish secretary (interpreter) of embassy to Turkey, $3,600; Chinese secretary (interpreter) of legation to China, $3,600; Chinese assistant secretary (interpreter) (to the) of legation to China, to be appointed from the corps of student interpreters, $2,000; Japanese assistant secretary (interpreter) to the embassy to Japan, to be appointed from the corps of student interpreters, $2,000; Turkish assistant secretary (interpreter) to the embassy to Turkey, to be appointed from the corps of student interpreters, $2,000.

This appropriation last year was for secretary-interpreter. I hope the commitee will favorably consider the change of the title back to what it was. The Japanese, the Chinese, the Turkish secretary has a rather definite meaning in this case, but when you change the title to secretary-interpreter you impair the prestige of the office in the eyes of the local people. You put it on the basis of an interpretership and ultimately I am afraid it is going to interfere very much with the influence of the office. I would very strongly advise that you change the title back to that of the Japanese, the Turkish, and the Chinese secretary.

Mr. HOUGHTON. In what respect are the duties of the Turkish secretary different from that of interpreter?

Mr. CARR. They are different in this respect: An interpreter ordibarily means a man whose sole duty is to interpret from the Turkish language, let us say, into the English, and in that way assist his chief. All of these positions ambrace that duty.

Mr. HOUGHTON. That primarily is the reason we have them, of

course.

Mr. CARR. On the other hand, the Turkish secretary is the main liaison between the embassy and the foreign office and the other ministers. He is the man who goes to the foreign office as the representative of the ambassador and oftentimes conducts negotiations and intervenes for the protection of Americans. He needs to be a man with all the local prestige that we can give him, and the prestige that goes with the title means a very great deal.

Mr. TEMPLE. The Japanese secretary is not a Japanese nor is the Turkish secretary a Turk?

Mr. CARR. Oh, no; all of these gentlemen are American citizens. Practically all of them have been educated at the expense of the Government, beginning as student interpreters in the missions, learning the language, and then serving in the diplomatic missions or the consulates, and gradually have been advanced up to the grade of Japanese or Chinese or Turkish secretary of the embassy.

Mr. TEMPLE. Is not that title misleading to people who do not know the facts?

Mr. CARR. That, I think, was the reason that led the committee to change the title, because it was constantly misunderstood on the floor of the House. But, unfortunately, it is not as happy a selection for our purposes in the field as it ought to be. It would be much better to leave it under the old designation.

Mr. MOORES. May I ask a question as regards Persia? Why have we not a secretary-interpreter in Persia or secretary of legation?