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The work of any foreign office is necessarily confidential, and the general public can very seldom learn much of the method of approach adopted by the Department of Foreign Relations concerning important problems which this branch of the government is confronted with. Instructions of the United States Department of State, and reports of various diplomatic representatives to their superior officer, ultimately, after a lapse of years, appear in the official publication, Foreign Relations; but seldom, if ever, has the historian been given a glimpse of the consideration, and its nature, accorded any question by responsible officials on the ground in Washington, in the department itself.

Fortunately, as regards the problem of Austria-Hungary, the author is in possession of first-class evidence that from the very beginning of American belligerency the situation was given investigation and consideration so thorough-going that