The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2014 29 not substantial. Yet final passage was not smooth. Congressional indifference and a lack of political attention at key points in time delayed action. In the House of Representatives, vocal partisan attacks came in early 1923 from four Texas Democrats who chal- lenged almost every aspect of the bill, its sponsors and the means by which it had progressed in Congress. Rogers himself and the Republican Party were specifically assailed. In March 1923, the House of Representatives passed Rog- ers’ bill. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved it. Congress was about to adjourn, and unanimous consent was required to bring the bill to the Senate floor for debate. As Carr waited anxiously in the gallery, no motion came to allow debate, so the bill died. The problemwas unanimous consent. Senator Thomas Ster- ling, R-S.D., was seen as likely to block the bill from coming to the floor because of concerns about its retirement feature. Lodge told Carr that he could do nothing with Sterling. Carr asked Secretary Hughes to write to President Harding, who wrote to Sterling. But the senator remained unconvinced. Carr suspected that Lodge was not being sufficiently active, but hesitated to “nag” him. One of the leading consuls, Tracy Lay, thought that Lodge had not pushed the bill strongly enough, possibly because he was jealous of Rogers and did not want him to get credit for it. Carr himself was less harsh toward Lodge: “I am disposed to think … that if Lodge did refrain purposely from pressing the bill, it was because he was loaded up with distasteful administration measures at the last moment … and became tired and displeased and unwilling to fight for anything anymore. It may be, on the other hand, that he had learned that Sterling would continue his opposition, and that there was no use trying to pass the bill by unanimous consent.” He added: “A mere onlooker cannot judge without being put in possession of all the facts.” If not for the adjournment of Congress, the bill would likely have passed easily in 1923. In 1924 such opposition as existed was again politically pow- A fervent supporter of institutional reform, John Jacob Rogers well deserved his eventual nickname, “the father of the Foreign Service.”