The Foreign Service Journal, March 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2019 11 anniversary of the birth of the American Foreign Service Journal , should have a permanent place in the mind of every member of the Foreign Service. … By contributing encouragement, inspira- tion and information, the Journal can do highly important work in behalf of every member of the Service; and by promoting a high idealism and a fine spirit, it can help that organization to render a maximum of public service and attain its proper place in the public estimation.” At the 25-year mark, in the March 1944 edition, retired FSO James Barclay Young, co-founder of the FSJ , reminisced: “Whereas the Foreign Service Association developed from the enthusiasm of a few youthful consular officers on duty in the Department of State during the first World War, the Journal can be said to be the outcome of the optimism of two of those offi- cers, almost as an answer to their prayers. … “At the time it never occurred to me that it was quite pos- sible that neither of us knew the slightest thing about starting a publication of any sort. I do not know what Wesley Frost knew about launching and running a printed periodical but to me he looked as though he ought to. …What influenced me more than anything else was the fact that we had started an Association among the officers of the Service and were taking their money as dues, and had almost nothing to offer them in return except we were organized and had their interests at heart and a lot of good intentions and some few plans. …. “There were quite a few skeptics around the Department of State who had not even approved of our having started the Association in the first place and who looked askance on almost everything connected with it. Almost the entire Department would have been shocked at the idea of a pub- lication of any sort. The mere mention of printed matter, statements issuing from the Department into print made them wince as though they were gun-shy. … Each proof or dummy had to be sent to Mr. Wilbur Carr’s office for his approval before it was accepted for publication. “Mr. Carr was an extremely busy man doing a fine job. … Each month the proof rested somewhere on the Assistant Sec- retary’s desk and days went by until it lay there well beyond the date when it should have been in print. Wesley Frost and I used to go to Mr. Carr’s desk now and then … and lift the proof out from under a pile of papers and place it on top of the pile, but even at that, our issues were usually about a month late.” On the Journal ’s 40th anniversary , in February 1959, an unsigned editorial “Serving a Unique Readership,” commended the FSJ , remarking: “We think that 1958 … with precedent-break- ing issues on Outer Space and Africa, was a good year for the Journal . …The Journal … seeks to provide a forum for construc- tive criticism toward the improvement of the Service. That is not to say that the Journal intends to feed on controversy for the sake of controversy, nor to provoke argument where none exists, nor to embark on pointless crusades.” At the half-century mark, in the March 1969 edition, an unsigned editorial, “The Challenge of the Next Fifty Years,” included the following: “The Journal was allowed to be born fifty years ago only on the condition that it exclude ‘tendentious talk’ from its contents. …We trust this issue then, like the Association and the profession it represents, dem- onstrates progress away from these limited beginnings. “Some of our contributors offer critical views, in histori- cal perspective, of American diplomacy, its practitioners and its organization. … Historic reminiscence and reflection, while mirroring the past, also have their lesson for the future. Indeed, the President and the Secretary of State have issued a challenge to the department and to the Foreign Service to play the leading role they should in influencing and implementing United States Foreign Policy. … [The president] reiterated a plea for independent thinking, for the expression of dissenting and divergent views, and for the articulation of constructive criticism. … We hopefully pre- dict, at this mid-century mark, that the pages of the Journal during the coming years will contain more ‘tendentious talk’ than in the past fifty. Such expressions will be the reflection of a healthy but responsible ferment in the foreign affairs com- munity.”