If Mr. Lansing had been a man of more robust fiber, he would have returned his portfolio to Mr. Wilson as early as 1916, for the President was writing notes to the belligerents and did not, even as a perfunctory courtesy, consult his Secretary of State; he made it only too patent he did not consider his advice worth asking. Mr. Lansing was too fond of his official prominence to surrender it easily, and that is another curious thing about the man. Somewhat vain, holding himself in much higher estimation than the world did, few men have so thoroughly enjoyed office as he. But he remained the quiet and unassuming gentleman he had always been; and he certainly could not have deluded himself into believing that there was a still higher office for him to occupy.
Mr. Lansing could not screw up his courage to resign in 1916. The following year the United States was at war and he naturally could not desert his post; but in 1919 Mr. Lansing was given another opportunity, and still he was obdurate. He has told us in his public confession that he tried to persuade the President not to go to Paris. Mr. Wilson, as usual, remained unpersuaded, and Mr. Lansing humbly followed in his train.
Then, of course, Mr. Lansing could not resign, but in Paris he was even more grossly humiliated; he was completely shut out from the President's confidence; he wrote letters to Mr. Wilson which the President did not deign to answer; so little did Mr. Lansing know what was being done that he sought information from the Chinese Delegates! It sounds incredible, it seems even more incredible that a Secretary of State should put himself in such an undignified position, and having done so should invite the world to share his ignominy. But he has set it down in his book as if he believed it was ample defense, instead of realizing that it is condemnation.
Curious contradictions! One might expect a sensitive man, a man who has never courted publicity, who has none of the genius of the self-advertiser, to crave forgetfulness for the Paris episode, to shrink from publicly exposing himself and his humiliations, but Mr. Lansing seemingly revels in his self-dissection. The President slaps his face; in his pride he summons all the world to look upon the marks left by the Executive palm. He feels the sting, and he enters upon an elaborate defense to show it is the stigmata of martyrdom. A treaty was framed of which he disapproved, yet he could sign it without wrench of conscience. Unreconciled to resignation in Paris, he returned to Washington as if nothing had happened, again to resume his subservient relations to the President.
Opportunity, we are told, knocks only once at a man's door, but while opportunity thundered at Mr. Lansing's portal "his ear was closed with the cotton of negligence."
Early in 1920 Mr. Wilson dismissed him, brutally, abruptly, with the petulance of an invalid too tired to be fair; for a reason so obviously disingenuous that Mr. Lansing had the sympathy of the country. He should either have told the truth then and there or forever have held his peace; and had he remained mute out of the mystery would have grown a myth. The fictitious Lansing would have become an historical character. But he must needs write a book. It does not make pleasant reading. It does not make its author a hero.
It does, however, answer the question the curious asked at the time of his appointment: "Why did the President make Mr. Lansing Secretary of State?"
BOIES PENROSE
The most striking victim of the American propensity for exaggeration is the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Boies Penrose. He has a personality and contour that lend themselves to caricature. Only a few deft strokes are needed to make his ponderous figure and heavy jowl the counterpart of a typical boss, an institution for which the American people have a pardonable affection in these days of political quackery. For, when the worst is said of the imposing array of bosses from Tweed down to the present time, they could be forgiven much because they were what they were. That is why, perhaps, the altogether fanciful picture of Penrose, propped on his pillows with his telephone at his bedside directing the embattled delegates at Chicago, who in sheer desperation turned to Warren G. Harding, is dwelt upon fondly by a deluded public.