epartment
became not only the center about which the whole machinery of the
Government revolved but on it was focused the attention of the
country and the thoughts of Europe. The Counselor of the Department
was lifted out of his obscurity; despatches to the belligerents
signed "Lansing" were published in the newspapers, statements were
issued by him, he was interviewed; he received Ambassadors, and
when an Ambassador visited the State Department the nerve centers
of the whole world were affected. Again, a few months later, in
June, 1915, Mr. Bryan kindly accommodated Mr. Wilson by knocking
himself into a cocked hat, and Mr. Lansing was appointed Secretary
of State. Few men had risen so rapidly. He had no reason to
complain of his luck.

Mr. Wilson made some extraordinary appointments--a close observer
has said he could read motives but not men--and his appointment of
Mr. Lansing at a time of crisis would have been inexplicable were
it not logical as Mr. Wilson reasoned. Mr. Wilson did not invite as
his associates his intellectual equals or those who dared to oppose
him; it was necessary that the State Department should have a
titular head, but Mr. Wilson was resolved to be his own Secretary
of State and take into his own hands the control of foreign policy.
No great man, no man great enough to be Secretary of State when the
world was in upheaval, would have consented to that indignity; no
man jealous of his own self-respect could have remained Mr.
Wilson's Secretary of State for long. A Secretary of State or any
other member of the Cabinet must of course subordinate his judgment
to that of the President, for the President is the final court of
appeal. But Mr. Wilson went further than that; he heaped almost
unparalleled affront upon Mr. Lansing; he made the great office of
Secretary of State ridiculous, and he invested its incumbent with
no greater authority than that of a copyist.

Perhaps Mr. Wilson reads men better than his critics believed;
perhaps Mr. Wilson had fully taken the measure of Mr. Lansing and
knew how far he could go.

Nature never intended Mr. Lansing to be a leader of men, to fight
for a great cause, or to engage in physical or intellectual combat.
His life has been too soft for that, and he is naturally indolent.
He is fond of, and has more than the amateur's appreciation for,
music, painting, poetry, and the classics of literature. He has
dabbled in verse, he sketches and he has written, but wit