Another great power of the President is his control of our foreign relations. In domestic matters, the Federal government shares every field, executive, judicial and legislative, with the states, but in foreign affairs, the whole governmental control is with the President, the Senate and Congress. The states have nothing to do with it. The President initiates a treaty and the Senate confirms it. The Senate, however, cannot initiate a treaty, the President alone can do that. Congress' powers to declare war and regulate our foreign commerce are its chief powers in respect to our foreign relations. So that, except in ratifying treaties, in regulating commerce and in declaring war, the President guides our whole foreign policy. Through the State Department he conducts all negotiation and correspondence with other governments and according to the Constitution he receives ambassadors and foreign ministers. Now you might possibly think that that meant only that he must have a flunky at the White House to take their cards--but it means a good deal more. He appoints ambassadors and ministers to other countries and instructs them. He receives the diplomatic representatives from other countries and does business with them. He construes treaties and asserts the rights of our government and our citizens under them. He considers and decides the rights of other governments and their subjects in a way which practically binds our government and people. And in order to receive ambassadors and ministers, he must determine whether they have been properly accredited, so that they have the proper authority to act for the country they claim to represent. When there is a dispute as to what person is the chief executive of a foreign country and therefore entitled to send an ambassador or minister, the President must decide it. In other words, he alone can exercise the power of recognition. How important a power this is, we may know from our recent experiences with Mexico, for President Wilson, by withholding recognition from General Huerta, was able to render his longer tenure as chief executive impossible. In our foreign relations it is often the President's duty to formulate the national claim of sovereignty over territory whose ownership is in dispute. This is a political question and his decision or claim in regard to it is taken as final by the Supreme Court. In the Fur-Seal Controversy, Mr. Blaine took the position that our jurisdiction reached out over the Bering Sea. The question was contested in the Supreme Court by the British and the Canadian governments. The Supreme Court said: "We cannot determine this. It is a political question and must, therefore, be decided by the President through his Secretary of State." We then submitted the issue to an international tribunal, and the decision was against us.