Robert Lansing:A Study in Statecraft

By David Glaser

This volume is a study of the career of Robert Lansing, Woodrow Wilsons Secretary of State from 1915 to 1920. Holding this office during the neutrality period, Americas entry into World War I, and the peace negotiations that followed, his was an important position at a critical juncture in American history.
While many historians have dismissed Lansings contributions as insubstantial, this author believes otherwise. This work will show that in nudging a reluctant president toward war with Germany Lansing was persuasive indeed. His most important contributions, however, came after Wilson returned to the United States in 1919 and became incapacitated during the fight for ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. In the months that followed Lansing took the position of leadership in the Cabinet, holding important meetings on all of the issues of the day and reassuring the nation that the Executive branch of government still functioned. He also helped to resolve critical Mexican and Russian issues.
Finally, and most importantly during this period, Lansing was in league with the strong reservations in attempting to force Wilson to accept modifications to the Treaty as a condition for ratification. In this regard he provided the Republican opposition with important information regarding compromises made at Paris and the feelings of both himself and other Commissioners as to flaws in the Treaty.
Throughout his career Lansing was a strong proponent of his views on the key issues of the day. Sadly when faced with a President of equally strong views, often different from his own, Lansing resorted to indirection, deception and ultimately disloyalty in attempting to achieve his objectives. In the end Lansings many positive contributions were diminished by the actions of his final days.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503545014

David Glaser

Throughout his academic career at the State University of New York, the University of Maryland and Skidmore College David Glaser has been a keen student of American diplomatic history. Holding his doctorate from the University of Idaho his dissertation concerned Woodrow Wilson’s intervention in Mexican affairs from 1913-1916. Subsequent studies convinced him that the period from 1898-1920 saw not only America’s emergence as a great power and holder of empire, but that it also set the stamp on American diplomacy that provides the rationalization for our actions today. At the heart of Wilson’s New Diplomacy was a belief in American exceptionalism, American institutions and above all American values. From Wilson’s time to that of George W. Bush this has become the American rationale for our endless interventions. That they are often misplaced or undercut by less noble concerns does not make them less powerful. Professor Glaser has now retired and spends half the year with friends in upstate New York. The rest of his time he resides with his family in Florence, Italy.

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Robert Lansing: A Study in Statecraft

David Glaser

Copyright © 2015 by David Glaser.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Lansing: War Memoirs of Robert Lansing. Digital imaging courtesy of HartiTrust.

Rev. date: 04/10/2015

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Contents

Preface

Chapter I Robert Lansing: The Early Years

Chapter II Lansing and Wilson: The Strange Partnership (1915–1919)

Chapter III Versailles: The Parting of the Ways

Chapter IV The Return

Chapter V The Wilsonian Interregnum

Chapter VI 1919: Lansing and the Department of State

Chapter VII The Mexican Imbroglio

Chapter VIII Bolshevik Threat and Russian Ventures

Chapter IX The Great Betrayal

Chapter X Resignation

Appendix A Edith Wilson to Robert Lansing, November 14, 1919

Appendix B Character Sketches

Appendix C Lodge, Wilson and Hitchcock Reservations

Footnotes

Bibliography

Preface

In 1917, during the First World War, a correspondent for the New York Tribune ventured to ask the following question:

Fifty years hence, when the diaries and memoirs and biographies of those who fought and thought to win this war are making popular magazine series, it will be interesting to see how large a shadow the present Secretary of State throws against this background… will history, weighing and assaying reputations with its nice scales and balances, do anything more than record him as a thorough, modest, likable man?¹

More than fifty years have passed. The men who worked with Robert Lansing have written their memoirs, been enshrined in biographies, and the events of the great conflict in which they took part have been thoroughly discussed. But Robert Lansing’s role as secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson from 1915 to 1920 still remains something of an enigma and a matter for lively dispute.

Until recently it was widely assumed that Woodrow Wilson was his own secretary of state and that his most valued assistants were unofficial advisers such as Colonel Edward M. House. Both within and without the State Department, Lansing’s associates relegated him a minor role: Mrs. Wilson referred to the secretary as a clerk; Breckenridge Long, Josephus Daniels, House, William McAdoo, William Phillips, and others were in substantial agreement with the president’s wife. In varying degrees, they considered him reclusive, lacking in imagination, and overly legalistic.² This view was supported in earlier historical works as well, Samuel Bemis, for example, referring to the secretary as a legal technician, a subordinate by training and disposition.³

In later years, with the release of the essential archival materials in the United States and abroad, new viewpoints on Lansing’s relationship with Wilson and his role in the decision-making process have been put forward. Daniel Smith’s Robert Lansing and American Neutrality (1958) and Burton Beers’s excellent monograph Vain Endeavor: Robert Lansing’s Attempts to End the American Japanese Rivalry (1962) are the two most notable studies of the secretary’s career to date. Both authors believe that Lansing was a valuable asset to the president during the neutrality period and proved realistic in his appraisal of German and Japanese threats to American self-interest.⁴ Beers, particularly, indicates that if foreign policy had been guided more by Lansing’s principles than by Wilsonian dreams, United States diplomacy might have had more beneficent long-range results.⁵

By way of contrast, the dean of Wilsonian scholars, Arthur Link, has reevaluated Lansing’s statecraft and found the secretary wanting.⁶ Whereas Beers and Smith stress the healthy nature of Lansing’s realism, Link denies that Wilson was overly idealistic and, instead, stresses the secretary’s deep disagreements with his chief. Prior to America’s entry into the conflict, Lansing is pictured as both unneutral and untrustworthy, bent upon undermining many of Wilson’s diplomatic efforts.⁷

This author tends to agree with Professor Link’s argument and believes that it applies not only to the neutrality period but to the entire relationship between the two men. While Lansing and Wilson both came to ascribe to a New Diplomacy, which envisioned the reordering of world affairs through American democratic-capitalistic principles, the differences between them were nonetheless great. It has been suggested that theirs was the conflict of the legal with the political mind.⁸ Perhaps a more accurate way of putting it is to suggest instead that theirs was the clash between the narrowly pragmatic and conservative views of Lansing and the intuitive and liberal mental processes of Wilson. In any case, the dichotomy in their characters produced a profound disharmony of views on specific policies, and in revealing his opinions, Lansing increasingly found his advice ignored.⁹

By the time of the Versailles negotiations, therefore, Lansing had become a minor figure in the decision-making process. He had not been allowed to participate in the drawing up of the draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations. To his suggestion that Wilson not attend the peace conference in person, the president had turned a deaf ear.¹⁰ Finally, when the secretary committed the heresy of indicating that he felt the League Covenant and the treaty should be separated, he placed himself in complete disfavor. Without power, opposed to many of the president’s policies, Lansing would complain to Ray Stannard Baker in Paris, I can do nothing whatever, we are just drifting.¹¹

Lansing’s statement to Baker, however, reflected more the feeling of the moment than any acceptance of the position in which he found himself. In corroborating the contentions of Arthur Link, it must be stressed that the secretary, a forceful if unassuming man, had years earlier determined upon the use of indirect means to influence Wilsonian diplomacy. These might consist of the relatively innocuous practices of appealing to Wilson’s prejudices or working through intermediaries such as Colonel House.¹² On the other hand, Lansing’s methods might also include attempts to bypass Wilson by making unauthorized statements to the press and foreign ambassadors.¹³

It is contended here that the secretary’s tendencies to use these latter means of dealing with the president—and they can only be described as devious—increased dramatically in the months between the return from Paris and his forced resignation in January 1920. The reason for this is to be found in Lansing’s bitterness at being excluded from so many of the crucial decisions at Versailles and in the opportunity presented him by Wilson’s critical illness in the latter months of 1919. With Wilson bedridden and isolated, the secretary could emerge from the shadows into which he had been unwillingly placed, ignore the president, and conduct diplomacy in his own way.

This was an event of major importance, both for the secretary and for American diplomacy. As a result of his actions, these final months of Lansing’s career were, in many ways, his most significant and so merit in-depth study.¹⁴ It will be demonstrated that although the secretary made numerous positive contributions during the months between May 1919 and February 1920, overall, he took great liberties in usurping executive authority, attempted to have Wilson declared unfit for office, and used his influence in the cabinet to lead domestic policy in more conservative directions. In the realm of diplomacy, he would make strenuous efforts to reverse the Wilsonian policy of accommodation toward Mexico and slow down the exodus of Allied troops from Russia. Finally, and perhaps most important, he would actively aid the Republican opposition in its efforts to amend the Treaty of Versailles and force Wilson into a position where he must compromise.

Whether such actions are to be condoned or condemned depends upon the political proclivities of the reader and one’s view of the proper relationship between a secretary of state and his chief. This much, however, is certain: at one of the most critical junctures in American diplomatic history, 1919, Lansing, among others, was attempting to wrest the control of events out of the president’s sickly hands and direct them into non-Wilsonian channels. To a remarkable degree he, and they, were successful.

Chapter I

Robert Lansing: The Early Years

Woodrow Wilson’s two terms in office were marked by grandiose adventures in both domestic and foreign affairs. In the first realm, as most historians agree, the president was aptly suited to lead the nation by virtue of his long studies in American history and political science and as a result of his single term as a Progressive governor in New Jersey.¹ However, the Princeton scholar had been elected on the basis of the domestic issues that faced a young nation whose industrial and economic growth had outstripped the protective clothing of reform and social justice—not for his expertise in foreign affairs. As a teacher, political orator, and writer, Wilson had given little indication that he was aware of the main currents then transforming America’s foreign relations.² He had seldom traveled abroad and had restricted the bulk of his international understanding to a love of British institutions and literature.³ Thus, it was only appropriate that shortly before his inauguration as president on March 4, 1913, Wilson indicated to a close friend, It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.⁴

Fate was more than ironical, it was cruel. Immediately upon assuming office, the untrained president was plunged into a series of disputes with Mexico, which twice led to armed American intervention and to the most strained relations since 1848. The Japanese began to make dangerous moves in the direction of China and the Philippines, muttering dire threats of war as the California legislature excluded their nationals from owning land; Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and the entire isthmus became a festering wound crying for the lancet of reform.⁵ Then within two years after taking office, Wilson was totally immersed in an effort to guide the nation along the path of neutrality as Europe plunged into the abyss of world war.

To aid him as he served his apprenticeship in the handling of these matters, the uninformed chief executive had the counsel of an unskilled diplomatist, William Jennings Bryan. The appointment of Bryan as secretary of state had largely been a matter of political expediency. The once golden-haired boy of the Platte, three times a candidate for president, represented the important agrarian wing of the party. Equally significant, it had been Bryan who had persuaded the doubtful to nominate Wilson at the Democratic convention in 1912.⁶

As a reward for past and present services, then, Bryan had been made secretary of state, bringing to that office a rugged honesty, Christian kindliness, a large acquaintance with men, and a passion for peace. But he did not bring expertise in foreign affairs and, along with Wilson, was ill-prepared to deal with events beyond the nation’s shores.⁷

Bryan’s initial failings were compounded by the fact that once in office, he did not have adequate time at his disposal to either learn the secretary’s skills or to carry them out. Much effort was spent, in those early months, finding places within the new administration for deserving Democrats.⁸ Equally demanding were the continual political tours and Chautauqua speeches with which the aging orator attempted to supplement his government stipend. An administration critic estimated that these latter endeavors took as much as seventy-two of Bryan’s 310 working days in 1913 alone, and the New York World was driven to offer him $8,000 a year if he would stay at his desk.⁹

While much of the criticism concerning Bryan was particularly partisan and unfair, the situation concerning diplomatic expertise in the early Wilson administration was a critical one. This state of affairs cast an unusual amount of responsibility, as well as an unusual amount of opportunity, upon the shoulders of those subordinates who surrounded the secretary. In particular, the position of State Department counselor became a central one. After March 27, 1914, this post was held by Robert Lansing.

Lansing’s selection as the replacement for disgruntled Republican John Bassett Moore was logical enough.¹⁰ Born to a patrician family in Watertown, New York, on October 17, 1864, he had spent much of his life preparing for just such a position. His forefathers included state senators, distinguished jurists, and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.¹¹ Consequently, his parents raised him in this tradition, closely supervising his early education, sent him on to Amherst, and encouraged his rapidly developing interest in history and politics.¹²

A close friend, David Lane, pictured him in his immediate post-Amherst years as a fun-loving, lazy, and secure first son.¹³ Even at this early date, however, he was seen as slowly adjusting to the life role expected of him by his family. Three years were spent in his father’s Watertown office where Captain Johnny, as the elder Lansing was known, taught him the expected gentlemen’s profession of law.¹⁴ An early defeat for the position of Watertown mayor terminated his political ambitions, and he soon settled into the routine of a junior partner in the new firm of Lansing and Lansing.¹⁵ Life was enlivened by late-night studies of history, an occasional article on politics and law, and fishing trips to Henderson Harbor or Galloo Island.¹⁶

Rescue from such comfortable mediocrity was the result of a carefully planned marriage and the subsequent career that came with it. John Lansing was an acquaintance of career diplomat John W. Foster. Foster had been secretary of state under President Benjamin Harrison and had an attractive daughter, Eleanor. The elder Lansing deliberately encouraged a meeting, and then a courtship between his son and this well-situated young lady. His efforts proved successful, and marriage followed Robert’s return from a trip to Europe in 1890.¹⁷

Marriage to Eleanor Foster opened the door to international law and Washington politics: what was more natural than to assist his father-in-law in the handling of his complex international dealings? In the years following his marriage, Lansing was increasingly engaged in this demanding profession. Between 1892 and 1893, Foster managed to obtain his appointment as an associate counsel on the United States Behring Fur Seal Arbitration cases. Becoming counsel in 1896, he distinguished himself by his thorough and unobtrusive handling of his numerous tasks.¹⁸ In 1903, this success was followed by his appointment as solicitor and counselor for the United States before the Alaskan Boundary Tribunal. He served in a similar capacity, at the request of President Taft, in the North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration in 1910.¹⁹ By 1911, he was frequently being called upon by the Department of State to assist in giving advice on complex matters of international law.²⁰

Training of this sort was invaluable and brought with it the added bonus of proper connections. By 1914, Lansing had moved from Watertown obscurity to a position of somewhat specialized prominence in Washington, DC. When the counselor’s position became available in the State Department, both Elihu Root and Foster championed their protégé as capable, deserving, and a Democrat. After some altercation concerning the possible misuse of arbitration funds, Bryan recommended his appointment, and he was confirmed in the post on March 27.²¹

At the time he took office, Lansing was fifty years of age. Although troubled by diabetes, he was at the peak of his intellectual vigor. Short and dapper, of handsome visage with graying hair and impeccable manners, he was invariably genial and courteous. Even so, he seemed almost painfully shy in public, and his diffident manner made it difficult to draw him into conversation. His tendency to restrict his more intimate relationships and thoughts to a narrow circle of friends (to whom he was known as Bert) could cause many to misjudge him.²²

Obtaining his position only a few months prior to the outbreak of the world war, Lansing immediately proved a valuable addition to Bryan’s staff. He was to become the secretary’s right hand in all matters of international law and custom, and the preoccupied populist relied heavily upon him for advice and guidance.

Yet the two men were dissimilar in almost every respect. If Lansing was aristocratic, the egalitarian Bryan worked in baggy trousers and sweat-stained shirtsleeves. While the counselor was quiet and differential, his superior was outgoing and of great eloquence. Most important, beneath his bland exterior, Lansing had an extremely tough analytical mind, one accustomed to mastering complex data and thinking in terms of strategy and power. The secretary, on the other hand, tended to leave original thinking to others and acted primarily from idealistic and intuitive considerations when dealing with foreign affairs.²³ That the two men got on as well as they did during Bryan’s tenure in office was a tribute to Lansing’s subtlety and to the secretary’s tendency to rise above their differences in his desire to make the most of the counselor’s talents.

These talents were very much in demand after the outbreak of war in August 1914. Of the three men—Wilson, Bryan, and Lansing—only the secretary of state was strictly neutral. Throughout, he urged mediation and strove to maintain an impartial and friendly attitude toward both the warring camps. Peace was his goal; virtually any price that purchased it was one that he was willing to pay.²⁴

Wilson was guided by more complex impulses. As a pacifist, he preferred a position in history that portrayed him as the mediator of the great conflict rather than that of the leader of a vengeful nation. Even so, an Anglophile of long standing, he was aware of the challenge Germany posed to American global leadership, and his natural sympathies were with the Allied cause. This made a truly neutral policy most difficult, particularly when it came to economic or political reprisals as a means of forcing Britain to adhere to American principles.²⁵

Lansing’s position soon crystallized and was much less complicated. His early memoranda and diary entries give the impression of a man who is wrestling with the broad philosophical problems of the war and the task of remaining neutral.²⁶ However, well before the Lusitania incident he had become one of the most rabid defenders of the Allied cause, was cynical regarding the chances for mediation, and began working actively to bring the United States into the conflict.²⁷

Given the attitudes of the three men, a natural alliance soon formed between Wilson and Lansing, an alliance that was to cast most of the early American decisions in favor of the Allies. Thus, Lansing’s legal arguments convinced the administration that while German cruisers should be detained in American ports because of their offensive armament, well-armed British merchant ships should be allowed to come and go.²⁸ The counselor also won over the president to a continuance of the sale of munitions and weapons of war to all belligerents—a position that would materially assist the Allies—on the grounds that any change in existing policy would penalize the side having the strongest navy and would, therefore, be unneutral.²⁹ Finally, Lansing soon managed to reverse Bryan’s ban on war loans by making a naked appeal to the president in the name of American economic interest.³⁰

One significant aspect of these decisions was the degree to which they showed the president’s reliance upon the counselor and, conversely, his ever-increasing tendency to ignore Bryan. By late 1914, this had become so obvious as to become a source of embarrassment. In well-informed circles, it was common to insist that Lansing, not the populist leader, was the real secretary of state. Lansing Sees Wilson as Department Head, claimed the New York World in February 1915. Our Diplomacy at Its Best, pronounced the New York Times on February 13 in the wake of the German submarine crisis. A current jest indicated public opinion of both the new counselor and the secretary: "A man called at Mr. Lansing’s house and found him out. He wanted to telephone him but feared to bother him. ‘Do they telephone Mr. Lansing often at night?’ he asked his colored butler. ‘Does Mr. Bryan telephone him at all hours?’

‘Well,’ replied the servant, ‘Mr. Bryan don’t bother him much, sir, but the President just pesters him to death.’³¹

This commentary continued to be valid throughout much of 1915. Indeed, the first half of that year was one of Lansing’s greatest periods of achievement. In addition to an ever-broadening role in neutrality matters, he was of considerable assistance to the Wilson administration in determining Mexican policy. He was active in assisting Bryan with Pan American affairs and, additionally, began to contribute vitally to the American position in the growing dispute with Japan over Chinese territorial and political integrity.

Perhaps Lansing’s greatest achievement as counselor, however, came in the decisive role he played in the Lusitania incident. Despite warnings made by the German Foreign Office not to sail on the vessel, 128 Americans went down with the Cunard liner when it was sunk by a U-boat on May 7, 1915.³² Public indignation, already aroused by earlier incidents, swung rapidly against the imperial cause.

William Jennings Bryan was horrified but determined to place the latest German violation in the broadest perspective of general attacks on American neutral rights by all belligerents. Wilson was outraged by what he considered to be the immoral nature of unrestricted submarine warfare and cast about for an appropriate response. Lansing’s solution was to press for strong action that could easily have led to an open rupture between the two nations and possibly war.³³

Having been highly instrumental in persuading Wilson that the laws of nations sanctioned neutral citizen travel on belligerent ships,³⁴ Lansing’s initial response to the disaster was to reaffirm this right in a series of quick notes on May 9 and 10.³⁵ On the latter date, he urged upon the secretary a course of action that included (1) a formal German apology for the act, (2) the punishment of the responsible officers involved, (3) payment for the loss of American life, and (4) a pledge that in the future, American citizens would have their safety guaranteed on unarmed belligerent ships.³⁶

These suggestions, not Bryan’s, were decisive. Over the secretary’s objections, the executive had earlier taken the counselor’s advice on holding the Germans strictly accountable³⁷ for their submarine warfare. Wilson now rejected his subordinate’s suggestion that a tone of friendliness be included in the note, stating that I am sorry to say that in this matter my judgment is with Mr. Lansing. I think the body of the note contains a sufficient tone of sincere friendliness.³⁸ Bryan’s efforts to restrict American travel on belligerent ships, to send an equally strong note protesting British violations of United States rights, and to stress the possibility of arbitration met with failure.³⁹

Instead, while stating that there was such a thing as a nation that was too proud to fight, Wilson sent a note to the German government that reflected much of Lansing’s bellicose thinking.⁴⁰ Originally drafted by the president, rewritten by the counselor and Chandler P. Anderson, it spoke of the German violation of the sacred laws of humanity and indicated that the United States would uphold the right of its citizens to travel on the high seas. It insisted that the imperial government abandon unannounced submarine attacks on unarmed vessels and that they guarantee the lives of neutrals.⁴¹ With what he had earlier described as a heavy heart, Bryan signed this missive, and it was sent forward on May 13.⁴²

The German reply of May 28 was not encouraging. It refuted the American contentions, excusing the torpedoing on the grounds that the Lusitania was armed and carried contraband weapons.⁴³ On June 1, Lansing rejected the note in its entirety, indicating to Bryan that it failed to deal with the principles involved.⁴⁴ The counselor’s position was devastatingly simple: Germany was not entitled to sink the Lusitania without first warning its crew and passengers. Its actions had been illegal and inhuman.⁴⁵

Bryan counterattacked in the stormy cabinet meeting of June 1, by accusing his colleagues of pro-Allied sentiments and by insisting that the proper solution to American-German difficulties was to ban travel on belligerent ships.⁴⁶ Once again, he was defeated, and Lansing’s ideas were favored. The rough draft of the reply to Germany, prepared largely by the counselor, concentrated on the legal issues and the facts in the dispute between the two governments. It again, in harsher terms, demanded specific pledges from the imperial government.⁴⁷ Revised by Wilson on his own typewriter, this note was discussed at length in the cabinet meeting of June 4.⁴⁸

During this meeting, the secretary of state again defended his concept of even-handed neutrality before an unsympathetic audience. Unable to win them to his views and unalterably opposed to this second note, Bryan had little choice but to tender his resignation. Always a man of principle,