LANSING ON PEACE CONFERENCE

His curt dismissal from office by a petulant President on February 11, 1920, still rankles within Mr. Lansing. Despite the verdict of the November elections he feels under public suspicion and in need of justification for his conduct at Paris,--hence this volume anticipating the proper task of the historian or biographer.

The world-wide airing of the Lansing-Wilson grievances at a time too late for political effect and too early to secure impartial judgment, may satisfy the avidity of certain irreconcilables, but it neither settles controversy or redounds to the credit of the country; this spectacle of a President riding rough-shod over principle and precedent, with his Secretary of State weakly acquiescing in practices which he privately abhorred, while the world longed for a strong man to stand up and denounce them. Mr. Lansing does not appear as the sensation-monger. His narrative furnishes largely a corroboration of much that is already known. It reveals an honest, well-intentioned statesman subordinating his matured personal opinion to a dubious loyalty to his country's interests, and in the end signing a treaty without public protest or reservation, which he was convinced to be iniquitous, in order to obtain--peace at any price.

As early as a letter of May 25th, 1916, we are acquainted with the incompatability of the ideas of President and Secretary of State in regard to a world organization for peace. Mr. Lansing's extensive experience with international tribunals led him to advocate a legalistic basis for the mutual guarantees to be exchanged in the interest of peace. The President, however, that same year in an address before the League to Enforce Peace favored guarantees of combined force to preserve territorial integrity, of which Article X was the ultimate expression. The divergence of view with its increasing ramifications continued throughout the Conference, made the President unsympathetic with any plan for an international court until forced upon him by European statesmen, and caused him to be generally intolerant of the legal point of view which Mr. Lansing represented by training and inheritance. This ignorance and disregard of the President's for the juristic side of the negotiations took a curious twist in his notion that a preliminary treaty or modus viviendi containing a skeleton of the League of Nations would not have to be ratified by the Senate.

It is at best a melancholy task to thread the mazes of Paris in the winter and spring of 1919. Let it be said to Mr. Lansing's credit that he has done it with a less degree of harshness toward the unfortunate American personality involved, and with a more subdued sense of the pent-up wrongs of the Conference than either Keynes or Dillon. Only upon the question of the secret diplomacy of the "big Four" and the Shantung settlement does he exhibit in his memoranda the inflamed state of mind that burned beneath his constant dignity and forbearance. For Mr. Lansing the Conference was an uncharted course of neglected counsel, cutting rebuffs and purposed ignorance as to the American programme.

Aside from their opposite theories as to a League of Nations, the chief points of difference which led Mr. Lansing to accept the President's guidance "with increasing reluctance", were (1) the separation of the Covenant from the Treaty, (2) the doctrine of self-determination, (3) the proposed treaty with France, (4) the lack of an American programme, (5) secret diplomacy, (6) the system of mandates and (7) the Shantung settlement. The nearest approach to agreement came on the Flume question and was there confined to the principles involved.

The addition of a chapter on the famous Bullitt Affair adds nothing to our estimation of Mr. Lansing, whereas it substantiates the supine reluctance of the Secretary of State to break with the President. Whether this worked benefit or ill to the country is a problem for the future historian and not for the present generation, however much Mr. Lansing may wish it otherwise.