Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-08-22
COL. HAY IN THE STATE
DEPARTMENT..

Col. John Hay, whom the President
has selected to succeed Secretary Day
as the head of the State Department,
is certainly a man Of wide experience
both in diplomacy and in American
politics. For thirty seven years Col.
Hay, who is now about sixty, has been
more or less in public life, or ever
since Abraham Lincoln took him to
Washington in 1861 as member Of
his official household. During the
rest of President Lincoln's life Colonel
Hay was intimately associated with
him as confidential secretary and per-
sonal aide de- camp. Subsequently
he served several years in diplomatic
! capacities, being successfully secre-
tary of legation at Paris, Vienna and
! Me- rid. His observations of Spanish
life and character have been embod-
led in a most readable book, which,
as Spain changes very little, can be
perused as proftably today as when
it was written. Colonel Hay as am
bassador to Great Britain has dis
charged the duties that have fallen to
him we'll and, what is Of Importance
in court as critical as that Of st.
James, gracefully. An American am
bassador to England to be successful
must make a good impression, and
such an impression Colonel Hay has
made. The rough and ready school
of diplomatists may be understood in
Lr,t io roCortp6 tho
hundred ways that are open to gov
eminent whose executive agents are
always we'll bred, and as such have
the resources of good breeding at
their command for tripping up and
humiliating a maladroit without COM
hitting themselves. Doubtless, the
good impression Colonel Hay has
made in England was borne in mind
by President Mckinley in choosing
successor to Secretary Day. A man
who is favorably regarded in a great
foreign country is all the stronger for
the United States when in charge of
the State Department at Washington.
Moreover, at this time when common
interests and tendencies are drawing
the United States and Great Britain
closer together day by day, a secre-
tary Of state who comes to Washing
ton fresh from intimate personal and
official relations with the leading Brit
ish public men is peculiarly we'll
equipped. There are excellent rea-
sons for believing that our govern
ment, while profoundly sensible of
the good effect of British friendship
during our war with Spain, has nei-
Their forgotten the entangling nature
of alliances, the interests that under
lie official British friendship, nor the
unstable character and position Of the
present British ministry, one whose
dispatches seem to be made up in
equal proportions Of waste paper and
wasted ink Lord Salisbury's gov
eminent is perpetually sounding chal-
lenges without picking up the glove.
Inevitably the main problems of
our foreign relations with which Col.
Hay will have to deal are those left
by the war with Spain, but at the
present writing there is little danger
of their involving any international
complications at the result Of that
contest. Whatever neutral govern
ments may have thought, however
European editors may have thunder
ed against the United States, no Eu-
ropean premier has departed from the
strict letter of neutrality. Even the
German attitude at Manila is more
exasperating to US here at home than
it appears to have been to Dewey.
With Col. Hays knowledge of Spain
and of Great Britain he is certainly
we'll adapted to second Secretary
Days labors as a peace commissioner.
We do not anticipate from Col. Hay
any policy Of adventure which shall
carry his department away from the
executive. The constitution does not
make and never was intended to
make the secretary of state prime
minister. We have now as President
one who is eminently conservative,
and we may rest assured that the
cabinet in every department main
tains that subordination to his in
itiative which the consti ca ton in
crypt.
An ESnFaoation