Background
Robert Lansing was born in Watertown, New York, on Oc¬tober 17, 1864, the son of a lawyer.
Robert Lansing was born in Watertown, New York, on Oc¬tober 17, 1864, the son of a lawyer.
Lansing graduated from Amherst College in 1886 and joined his father's law firm; from 1892 until 1914 he rendered frequent service as counsel or agent of the U.S. government before international arbitration tribunals.
Also, Lansing for years acted as counsel for the Chinese and the Mexican legations in Washington, D.C. In April 1914, he accepted a post as counselor for the Department of State, and in August of that year was promoted to acting secretary of state under William Jennings Bryan. When Bryan, the Great Commoner, resigned owing to President Wilson’s sharp protest note over the German sinking of the Lusitania, Lansing replaced him as secretary of state ad interim; on June 23, 1915, Lansing was appointed as official head of that office. In effect, Wilson decided most foreign policy issues and entrusted the conduct of delicate negotiations to "Colonel" House, with the result that the German ambassador, Count Bernstorff, viewed exchanges with Lansing as a "mere matter of form."
Lansing, before Wilson, foresaw the eventual entry of the United States into the war and for that reason urged American recognition of the Carranza regime in Mexico in order to keep the U.S.'s hands free for possible intervention in the European war. While the President handled all correspondence concerning the German sinkings of the Lusitania, Arabic, and Sussex, Lansing was entrusted with the task of protesting the British blockade of the North Sea and especially of the British contraband controls. Lansing's language was often so strong in these exchanges that the Anglophile Ambassador W. H. Page described one of the notes as "an uncourteous monster of 35 heads and 3 appendices." This notwithstanding, the secretary of state as early as March 1917 counseled the entry of the United States into the war on the side of the Entente.
Lansing seized the chance to conduct his own diplomacy late in 1917. On November 2, he signed an agreement with Viscount Ishii of Japan that, while upholding the principle of the "open door" in China, recognized special Japanese interests there. This indiscretion cost the United States China's trust; it was, no doubt, motivated by the Allied desire to rally all possible support against the Central Powers.
Lansing and Wilson began to part ways at the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919. The secretary's legalistic and realistic views clashed with the president's idealistic and imaginative proposals: the former viewed the League of Nations as an unimportant appanage to the overall peace settlement, while the latter regarded it as paramount. Lansing was responsible for the unfortunate "sole war guilt" clause of the peace treaties, which laid the blame for the Great War totally upon Germany and Austria- Hungary, and which was exploited ruthlessly by the enemies of the Weimar Republic throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. In the end, Lansing signed the Versailles Treaty and advocated ratification by the Senate, arguing that it was better than no treaty at all. A final break with the president came on February 12, 1920, when Lansing called a cabinet meeting during Wilson's illness; the ailing leader forced the secretary of state to tender his resignation for this alleged slight.
A man of extreme courtesy and tact, Lansing returned to his private law practice in Washington until his death on October 30, 1928.
Lansing played a useful but subordinate role in the Wilson administration.
He was a supporter of the Allied forces in the war, despite his condemnation of their violations of neutral rights, and he strongly favored American intervention against the Central Powers in April 1917.
His marriage to Eleanor Foster, daughter of John W. Foster, President Grover Cleveland's secretary of state, made possible a career in international law.