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.
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