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.
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