Our government has generally assumed an attitude of indifference to matters of form and ceremony—an independence which has cost it no little prestige, and its diplomats a great deal of annoyance. It should be granted that forms and ceremonies have their place in diplomatic affairs, and that each court or capital has a right to its own long-established usages. But we have rather been inclined to turn up our noses at such foreign nonsense, forgetting that in matters of form there is sound discretion in the precept, “When in Rome do as the Romans do”. But the government seems to have cared less for the art of being agreeable than for the science of being successful, regardless of the fact that in diplomacy the one is a prerequisite to the other. Two illustrations of this may be given—the appointment of ambassadors and the question of a diplomatic uniform. It is only within the present decade that the United States has begun to exercise its constitutional right to be represented wherever it chooses by diplomats of the first rank, i. e., ambassadors. Previously its highest representatives abroad were diplomats of the second rank, i. e., ministers, who though thoroughly competent to handle the business were simply out-ranked by every ambassador of every second or third rate power in the world. This we could afford to ignore so far as it is merely a question of sentiment, but when it compels an American diplomat after waiting hours for an audience to give place to any ambassador who happens along, and when it implies an acceptance on our part of a secondary place among the nations, it is sheer nonsense to continue the practice. Our reasons were, first an ambassador is supposed to represent the person of his sovereign, and as we have no sovereign we should have no ambassadors; and second, the office itself was supposed to involve a greater outlay of money and a more gorgeous and elaborate display than was consistent with the simplicity of republican tastes.