The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

22 APRIL 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The Foreign Service Journal ’s first hundred years is a lively story of the development of an engaging and authoritative professional magazine, by and for the practitioners of American diplomacy. BY HARRY KOPP A CENTURY OF JOURNALS “W hen a diplomat wants to talk,” wrote novelist John Le Carré, “the first thing he thinks of is food.” Nowonder then that The Foreign Service Journal got its start in a restaurant, the long-gone Cushman’s at 14th and F Streets Northwest, where the American Consular Association held itsmonthlymeetings.The association, established in 1918 for social and profes- sional purposes, had struggled to put out an occasional newsletter, of which no copies survive. A happy stroke of nepotism, however, led inMarch 1919 to the first printed American Consular Bulletin , edited and published inNewYork “with the cooperation of the American Consular Association” by the brother of an active-duty consul and association member. DEFINING DIPLOMACY for YEARS Above inSILVERFOILonCover