MOORE, John Bassett, American lawyer, diplomatist and author: b. Smyrna, Del., 3 Dec. 1860. He attended private schools and was graduated at the University of Virginia in 1880. He read law in the office of Edward G. Brad ford, now United States district judge at Wil mington, Del., and was admitted to the bar there in 1883. In 1885 he passed the first civil service examination for admission to the De partment of State, at Washington, and was ap pointed a law clerk in that department in July of that year. In August 1886 he was appointed Third Assistant Secretary of State. In the summer of 1887, he acted as secretary to the conference between the Secretary of State and the British and German ministers on the affairs of Samoa; and in the winter of 1::7-88 he acted as American Secretary in the conference on the North Atlantic Fisheries. He assisted at the organization of the First International American Conference at Washington, and later made a report to the conference on the subject of extradition. In 1891 he resigned the post of Third Assistant Secretary in order to take the newly-created chair of International Law and Diplomacy at Columbia University, New York, a chair which he has since continued to hold. In April 1898, on the outbreak of the war with Spain, he was without solicitation appointed by President McKinley to the posi tionof Assistant Secretary of State. This position, which he had on three previous occa sions declined, he resigned in September of the same year, in order to accompany the American Peace Commission to Paris as Secretary and Counsel, in which capacity he took part in the negotiation of the Treaty of Peace with Spain. In 1904 he acted as agent of the United States before the United States and Dominican Arbi tration Tribunal. He was a member of the delegation of the United States in the Fourth International American Conference, at Buenos Aires, in 1910, and afterward served as a spe cial plenipotentiary to the Chilean Centenary. In 1912 he was appointed the delegate of the United States on the International Commission of Jurists, which was organized at Rio de Janeiro in that year, under the Pan-American Treaty of 1906, for the codification of Inter national Law. In March 1913 he became by appointment of President Taft a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
In the following month he was appointed by President Wilson counselor for the Department of State and was invested with authority to sign as acting Secretary of State in the absence of the Secretary, the grade of the position thus being raised. He resigned the post of counselor in March 1914. Mr. Moore is a member of the Institut de Droit International, of the Institut Colonial International, of the American Philosophical Society, of the American Political Science Association, of which he was president in 1913-14, and of various other learned so cieties. He is a member and honorary secre tary of the Hispanic Society of America; and an honorary member of the College of Lawyers at Costa Rica. He was a member of the Pan American Financial Congress at Washington in May 1915, acting as chairman of the com mittee on uniform laws„ by which the scheme of work of the Congress was drawn up; and he is vice-chairman of the American section of the International High Commission organized to carry out the plans of the Congress. He was a delegate of Columbia University and of various learned societies in the Second Pan American Scientific Society at Washington, December 1915-January 1916. He is vice president of the Pan-American Society of America. He is an incorporator of the Amer ican National Red Cross and a member of its central committee and of the executive com mittee of the New York chapter. His publica tions, apart from occasional papers and ad dresses, include
on Extraterritorial Crime' (Washington 1:-:7);