UNIFORM.—Consular officers are forbidden to wear any distinguishing uniform. The Regulations are indulgent enough to allow them to wear an Army uniform if they happen to have been in the Army of the United States during the Rebellion. ABSENCE.—Consuls are forbidden to be absent from their posts longer than forty-eight hours without reporting to the Department about it. No one is permitted to be absent more than ten days at any one time without permission from the President. Special permission must be obtained in order to return to the United States, and the statutes do not provide for a continuance of salary for an absence of longer than sixty days. This is about all that need be said about the consuls themselves. What remains to be considered will come up in connection with the duties of the consular office. We will wait a few moments for questions. * * * * * Q. “Professor, aren’t there other needed reforms in the consular service besides those you have mentioned”? A. “Certainly, but I preferred to dwell only upon the most difficult and at the same time the most vital of them all; namely, the choice and preparation of the men. I think it might be well to emphasize just a point or two more in this connection. The first is that the consular service ought not to be filled with foreigners. The Consular Register of July, 1899, shows that out of 706 subordinate positions, including commercial agencies, 412 are filled by men born in the country where they are stationed. In fact, out of a total of 1,020 men in the consular service only 547 are of American birth or parentage. The reason for this is that so many of the positions don’t pay enough to induce Americans to undertake them. Four or five hundred dollars a year may mean something to a man who is on the spot, small as the sum is, but it shuts Americans out of a large majority of the subordinate positions.