The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2018 23 Harry W. Kopp, a former FSO, is the author of The Voice of the Foreign Service: A History of the American Foreign Service Associa- tion (2015), and the co-author (with John K. Naland) of Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the U.S. Foreign Service, published in a revised third edition in 2017 by Georgetown University Press. He is a frequent contribu- tor to The Foreign Service Journal . The ACA and its publication were intended to foster esprit de corps and seriousness of purpose in a Service that was rapidly becoming professional. In 32 pages a month, the Bulletin published important texts (e.g., the economic clauses of the Treaty of Versailles), opin- ion pieces (“Why We Must Reform Our Diplomatic Service”), commercial information (foreign mar- kets for American-made candy), technical advice on consular matters (how to handle advance pay- ment of wages to seamen) and information on pend- ing legislation, congres- sional debates and per- sonnel actions. Revenue came from subscriptions at $1.50 per year, with additional income from advertising—the Liberty Bread Slicer, which could cut 26,100 slices in a day, often bought a page. The State Department found the idea of an independent publication deeply unsettling and insisted on prepublication review of every issue. With his signature on the Foreign Service Act (also known as the Rogers Act) on May 24, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge merged the consular and diplomatic services into a new Foreign Service of the United States. The American Consular Association and its Bulletin promptly adapted, becoming the American Foreign Service Association and the American Foreign Service Journal , first published under that title in October 1924. The transition was seamless, although monthly meetings moved from Cushman’s to a larger room at Rauscher’s on Con- necticut Avenue. The transformation brought immediate changes. Perhaps because the diplo- matic service was smaller (128 diplomatic officers to 518 consular officers) and more deeply rooted in patronage, the new Journal , now edited and published in Washington, was less ear- nest and more chatty than the Bulletin . The change was clear from the statement of purpose that appeared below the masthead in the first issue: The main purpose of the Journal will be inspira- tional and not educational. … Photographs, the light touch in the narration of experience, and personal items will be constantly desired. Propaganda and articles of a tendentious nature, especially such as might be aimed to influence legislative, executive or administrative action with respect to the Foreign Service or the Department of State, are rigidly excluded from its columns. “Greater Frankness” The early Journal was a cross between National Geo- graphic and today’s State Magazine . It carried travelogues, photographs of exotic places and people, sketches of life in the field, odd bits of history and lists of personnel appoint- ments, transfers, promotions, retirements, weddings, births and deaths. So anodyne was it that the department gave up its demand for prior review. The first print edition, March 1919.