The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

28 MAY 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL chief of the Bureau of Western European Affairs, exemplified the resistance to some to Carr’s efforts. Castle remarked that he did not regard an increase in diplomatic salaries as wise. “No man … not possessed of a large income” should be admitted to the Diplomatic Service, Castle sniffed. Another critic of the Rogers bills was Joseph C. Grew. Like Rogers, he was a Massachusetts native and Harvard man. A Boston Brahmin, Grew began his government career in 1904 as a consular clerk at the U.S. consulate in Cairo, but soon entered the Diplomatic Service and rose swiftly through the ranks. During the early 1920s he served first as minister to Denmark, then Switzer- land. In March 1924, he was made under secretary of State. Unlike Castle and his ilk, Grew and his col- leagues were not motivated by snobbery or a desire to protect privilege or patronage. They also shared the desire of Carr, Rogers and others to enhance the department’s professionalism and its ability to conduct diplomacy. In fact, they opposed union with the consuls precisely because they considered unity an obstacle to achieving those goals. Only diplomats, Grew believed, possessed the special- ized experience and ability required for such important work. Interservice union, he argued, would seriously harm their esprit de corps. Still, Grew and his supporters knew they held a weak hand. It was true that the Diplomatic Service occupied the most senior positions and exercised greater influence within the department. But it also suffered from a reputation as a haven for political- patronage appointees. One of Rogers’ strongest diplomatic supporters, Minister Hugh Gibson, played on this stereotype at a congressional hear- ing by deploring “the boys in the white spats, the tea drinkers, the cookie pushers … the specimens who have become poor imitations of foreigners.” Rogers himself characterized the diplomats as “men to whom social opportunities strongly appeal,” and expressed the hope of eliminating from the Service “the idle rich young man who thinks in terms of silk hats, spats and afternoon teas.” Another witness from the Diplomatic Service, Hugh Wilson, attempted to defend his peers by declaring that diplomats were “more spat upon than spatted.” This was decidedly a minority view, however. In the end, career diplomats sensitive to their service’s negative reputation and desirous of its professionaliza- tion had to go along with Rogers and Carr. A Hard Slog Rogers’ legislation eventually gained the endorsement of Sec- retary of State Charles Evans Hughes, who wryly remarked, “It is a poor patriot who would sink his ships and his diplomats at the same time.” Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge also supported the measure. Since the president, the secretary of State, and both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress favored the legislation—with the Senate minority leader lending his backing—opposition was John Jacob Rogers, the “father of the Foreign Service,” shown here in a portrait from 1921, was a Republican congressman from Massachusetts. Born in Lowell, Mass., in 1881, he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1912. After a brief stint in late 1918 as a private in the Field Artillery, Rogers introduced a series of Foreign Service reform bills, drafted largely by Wilbur Carr. He finally won passage in May 1924 of the Act that bears his name. Less than a year later, he was dead. His wife, Edith Nourse Rogers, succeeded him in Congress. She worked for passage of the Moses-Linthicum Act and was a key sponsor of bills creating the Women’s Army Corps, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the GI Bill. Rep. Nourse Rogers served in Congress for 35 years until her death in 1960. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division