ABSTRACT
Americans have never intended to give any one man such importance. They have always believed they possessed that democratic control of foreign affairs for which European liberals are agitating. The real facts of any diplomatic situation are not contained in the official notes. Almost always there is a personal conference between the ambassador and the Secretary of State; something is done to give a human tone to the guarded language of the document. Diplomats do not mumble and stutter as much as their written dispatches make them seem to. The diplomat has to consider not only what he means, but what different people will think he means, and how they will feel about what they think he means. The Democrats deplore the "dollar diplomacy" of Mr. Knox and the Taft administration, but Mr. Wilson has proposed a treaty with Haiti which, whatever its merits, is built on the most approved model of modern economic imperialism.
