The purpose of salary standardization is briefly:

To furnish a simple and logical classification of all employments, with general descriptions of duties, appropriate titles and rates of compensation, qualifications and conditions governing advancement, for purposes of appropriation, financial and civil service control, information to present and prospective employes and to the public. Salary standardization would be a relatively simple thing if a single government agency, backed by a strong executive, were empowered to develop a new classification and put it into effect.

Of the ten countries in South America, nine now have presidents who are dictators or who at some time during their careers have exercised dictatorial power. The tenth, Uruguay, with its tradition of working democracy, has resisted this trend towards personalist government. Recently it took an important step in the diffusion of executive power when through orderly constitutional reform the national presidency was replaced by a nine-man executive committee. The nation's stability has been attested to by those most cautious of judges, the international investors, who, fearful of trouble in Europe after the outbreak of war in Korea, moved their capital holdings from Berne to Montevideo. The country's democracy has been even more welcomed by those who have found it an oasis of freedom from Perón's police state across the river. Uruguay has successfully met Latin America's ever basic problem, political stability under democratic procedure.

Casual visitors who call Uruguay the Switzerland or Denmark of South America probably have in mind its small size; its location between two large states, Brazil and Argentina; its population of merely two and a half million; its pastoral economy, political liberty, social legislation, and government economic activities; and especially its penchant for a Swiss-style pluripersonal executive. Yet at best this comparison is severely out of context.

In many of our modern industries, aptitude tests are given to new employees in order to determine the type of position for which each worker is best fitted. Unfortunately, in legislative bodies committee assignments are dependent upon several factors, only one of which is specialized ability. To serve the public best, however, no one can truthfully deny that individual competence ought to be the basic reason for placing a legislator on the committee which can make the most advantageous use of his particular training and experience. Putting an international lawyer on an agriculture and forestry committee would be a sheer waste of talent. With these thoughts in mind, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been studied for the purpose of determining the qualifications of the 219 men who have been members of this body since it was established in 1816.

When, over a century and a half ago, a poet saw a group of his countrymen about to set sail on their way to a new home in Georgia, he took a gloomy view of their prospects. He believed that they were leaving a land of scattered hamlets, sheltered cots, and cultivated farms, where ease, health, and plenty had prevailed, for a “dreary scene” around the “wild Altama”—a region of blazing suns, wild tornadoes, poisonous fields, and matted woods where lurked the “dark scorpion … vengeful snake … crouching tigers … and savage men more murderous still than they.” Posterity has liked best the poet's fond memories of his native village. Goldsmith, however, considered the practical politico-economic aspect of his poem to be its best feature. He had indeed paid some attention to actual economic changes that were causing a depopulation of the English countryside. His compatriots, he believed, were crossing “half the convex world,” not because they were dissatisfied with a land where simple pleasures and “light labour … gave what life required but gave no more,” but because such a manner of living was no longer possible in Britain: “trade's unfeeling train” had “usurped the land” and made it a place where the “man of wealth” extorted pleasures “from his fellow-creature's woe” and took up “a space that many poor supplied.”

Americans have had a long and varied experience with military government. The names New Mexico, California, New Orleans, Memphis, Cuba, Manila, Mindanao, Samoa, Guam, Vera Cruz, and Coblenz by no means exhaust the list of places where American military or naval governors have exercised control over civil populations. Virtually no effort has been made before the present war to analyze this experience and to draw from it principles to assist in the solution of the problems of the present and immediate future. Military government is of vast importance for the world of tomorrow. It is the transitional phase between the active conflict of armies and the quiet of an established peace. Military government may be—and has been at times in American history—as important for ultimate solutions as major military campaigns.

“Military government,” according to the official definition set forth in the War Department's Field Manual 27–5, “is that form of government which is established and maintained by a belligerent by force of arms over occupied territory of the enemy and over the inhabitants thereof. In this definition, the term territory of the enemy includes not only the territory of an enemy nation but also domestic territory recovered by military occupation from rebels treated as belligerents.” The definition does not cover the whole range of actual occupations in American experience. Military government should not be thought of entirely in terms of enemy territory or enemy populations.

It is inevitable that any undertaking should be judged primarily from the point of view of what was originally attempted by the participants and expected by onlookers rather than by a strict standard of actual achievement. In most of the unfavorable discussion that has been current during and since the conference, the point of criticism is the opinion that the conference has not fulfilled its avowed purpose, rather than a complete denial of the usefulness of such results as actually have been accomplished. At the very opening session of the conference, M. Nelidoff in his presidential address pointed out in disillusioned language the impossibility of realizing certain general ideals that had been entertained with respect to these great meetings. He admitted that “we need not be discouraged from dreaming of the ideal of universal peace and the fraternity of peoples, considering that the essential condition of all progress is the pursuit of an ideal towards which we always strive without ever reaching it. Nevertheless, we should not be too ambitious.” He concluded by saying: “Let us set bravely to work, our path lit up by the bright star of universal peace which we shall never reach but which will always guide us.” While some among M. Nelidoff's audience approved of his cautious conservatism, others felt that his utterances had received an unduly pessimistic tinge from the unfortunate position in which Russia has found herself since the war. Nevertheless, when we now review the efforts and the accomplished work of the conference, we may take as the keynote, the words of the presiding officer, pointing out inevitable limitations and bidding us look for results not in sweeping resolutions, but in detailed and specific arrangements which at first sight may appear somewhat trivial and of a purely technical nature.

In a previous paper foreign relations as a phase of governmental activity were considered chiefly as an international phenomenon. Such relations were there discussed largely in their political bearing and some attempt was made to deduce from practice the considerations which affect foreign offices and the conditions encountered by diplomatic personnel. The problems of secrecy in negotiations and of secret treaties were examined and an effort made to indicate how much knowledge of both may be justifiably concealed. The present paper is a study of legislative control over foreign relations.

Systems of legislative handling of foreign relations may be distinguished as of three types, which we may designate as the continental, the executive, and the American. The American type is characterized by an imposed agreement between the executive and legislative departments of government before treaties can become binding upon the state. The continental type is characterized by a less complete dependence of the executive upon the legislative department in respect to treaty ratification. The executive type is characterized by an almost complete independence of the executive respecting treaty ratification.

All systems recognize definitely that the conduct of foreign relations is an executive function. None denies the patent facts that it is the place of the executive to speak and act for the state, and that, in all matters not definable as legislation, the minister can definitely bind the state. Innumerable decisions under all systems are reached by the department of foreign affairs without any but the executive branch of the government knowing anything of them until they are recorded facts.