land in 1794 lay down the following rule of conduct: "It is the President's wish that the characteristics of an American minister should be marked on the one hand by a firmness against improper compliances, and on the other by sincerity, candor, truth and prudence, and by a horror of finesse and chicane." These straightforward words began a tradition which has ever since animated the American diplomatic service. When after the Spanish war, under Secretary Hay, American diplomacy entered more fully into world-wide problems than in any previous era, the expression "the new diplomacy" was currently used in a laudatory sense to designate what Hay had implied when in a public address he had declared the Golden Rule to be the cardinal principle of American diplomacy—an ideal which makes secrecy and intrigue unnecessary.
In order to give the public an opportunity of informing itself concerning the conduct and development of foreign affairs, the United States Government has from an early date published an annual collection of diplomatic correspondence. Since 1861, this publication is known as Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. It was formerly published within two or three years of the year to which it related, but
