 Another difference between the law and the previous practice of the State Department was that any oath to a foreign state became grounds for loss of US citizenship even if no foreign nationality was acquired by that oath.Congress and the State Department were in agreement that loss of citizenship in wartime should not be permitted; this had been a long-standing principle in US law going all the way back to "Talbot v. Janson" in 1795, and Secretary of State Hamilton Fish had stated in the 1870s that permitting loss of citizenship in wartime "would be to afford a cover to desertion and treasonable aid to the public enemy.