cut short his program. The last speech he made at Buffalo was crowded with significance of what might come later. It was in a sense as though he were only preparing the way for an important development of American fiscal policy in connection with foreign trade. Those who were in his closest confidence in the days just prior to his death have knowledge of an evolution that had taken place in his mind--a mind that had given more thorough thought and study to tariff matters than almost any other in America at that time. They firmly believe that at the moment the life of President McKinley ended, he had planned a pronunciamento in favor of concessions to American foreign-trade interests which would have startled the country, put the Republican party in line with the mass of the voters who desired tariff revision, and of which his Buffalo speech strongly advocating reciprocity in commerce was only the opening paragraph. Had he lived, this one thing might have made a vast difference in the subsequent fortunes of the Republican party; but when he died his place was taken by a man whose marvelous activities did not include an interest in the tariff. In fact, as he frankly expressed it, the subject “bored” him, as it does many others, unfortunate for the country as this may be. The American diplomatic service has passed through some remarkable phases in the last twenty-five years. A few years ago it was quite frankly used as a means for rewarding political services to the party in power. No good could possibly come out of such a system. There were some exceptions to the general rule that American ambassadors and ministers were either indifferent to or else ignorant of the needs of the United States in international politics, but they were few and far between. More recently men have been selected for the most important places by reason of their wealth and social standing. Some of those selected made excellent representatives, but owing to the shortness of their terms of office they had no more than familiarized themselves with their surroundings than they were either recalled or found it expedient to return to their native land.