Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-08-08
ONLY THE HAGlOLOGIES CONTAIN
A PARALLEL TO LANSING
The Self. EHacement OF the Secretary OF
State Is Cause for Wonder
and Admiration


THE human comedy, enacted before our
L eyes in the full light of day. is mildly
entertaining. When we have nothing else
to do we cast a glance in its direction,
watch its unfolding with casual interest
and then yawn and think Of something
else. 1t is too commonplace to absorb at
tention long.
But let some one draw the curtain aside
and give US momentary glimpse behind
the scenes, we are all attention at once.
We are eager to discover who pulls the
strings. We will crane our necks and
twist our bodies in an effort to sec until
we are stiff for a week afterward. Like
the little boy in "Helen's Babies" we
want to see the wheels go round.
This is the reason for the amount of
space given in the Washington dispatches
to the testimony of Secretary Lansing
before the Senate foreign relations COM
mittee
We have seen Mr.. Lansing sitting in
the Office of secretary of state since June,
1915. We have read dispatches bearing
his signature. We saw him go to Paris
with the President as member of the
peace commission and we read that he
had been appointed to membership on the
committee to fix the responsibility for the
war. We saw a photograph of the last
page of the peace treaty containing his
beautiful signature next below that of
the President, the second name on the
historic document. And we have well
coined him home at the conclusion of
what we were won't to regard as his
arduous labors in Paris. He looked we'll
and strong and we were glad that he had
stood the strain so well.
But when he took his seat in the wit
ness chair in the Senate committee room
and reached out his arm and lifted the
curtain upon what had been going on be-
hind its gimmerng folds we discovered
more than we ever knew before about the
art of being secretary of state in the
cabinet of Woodrow Wilson.
We have had secretaries of state who
originated policies and were backed ,1y
the President in carrying them out.
James G.. Blaine will occur at once to the
mind as the man responsible for the pan
American policy intended to bind the re-
DuDllCS OF Llle SOulIl Will VIC great ltpuD-
lie of the North. 1t was not a Harri-
sonian enterprise, but was a project which
Mr.. Blaine had urged for years before he
entered Benjamin Harrisons cabinet.
Mr.. Blaine was more than a mere subor
dinate of the President He was an
adviser.
John Hay likewise was a man whose
conduct of the negotiations with the willy
old dowager empress of China during the
Boxer uprising marked him as a states
man of the first rank. And the skill with
which he developed the policy of the open
door in China against the interest and
desires of other powers was not origi-
mated or guided by William Mckinley or
Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Hay was sec
retary of state in fact as well as in name.
Of course, the final authority at all times
rested in the hands of the President, but
we have had Presidents who welcomed
the assistance and advice of big men.
In more recent years there was Elihu
Root, who took up the pan-American idea
where Blaine left it and cultivated it and
watered it and tended it with as much
care as if it were his own. He left upon
our foreign policy the impress of his own
personality.
But Mr. Wilson is not like other Presi-
dents. Whether Mr.. Lansing under a
man like Roosevelt or Mckinley or Harri-
son would have been a secretary of state
like Root or Hay or Blaine must forever
remain unknown. AS we have had a new
kind of President solitary figure who
keeps his own counsel, makes his own de-
cisions and uses the members of his cabi-
net to carry them out, it has been neces-
sary to develop a new kind of secretary
of state.
The Aeeting glimpse behind the scenes
to which we have been treated reveals Mr..
Lansing as man of great poise, self
control and humility. No man without
these qualities could have sustained for
four years the role which he has been
playing without bursting out in protest or
resigning in disgust. Such self-efface-
ment is as sublime as it is unusual. One
has to look in the literature of hagiology
to find its parallel.
Here we have the chief diplomatic Off
cial of the government, one of its repre-
sentatves on the commission which nego-
tiated the most momentous treaty of
peace since the morning stars sang to-
gether, protesting virtual ignorance
about what went on in the conference
How was the Representations covenant
negotiated? Ask Mr.. Wilson. How was
agreement arrived at on this, that or the
other matter? Perhaps Mr.. Wilson may
be able to tell you. Why was the demand
of Japan on the Shantung matter
acceded to? You will have to ask Mr..
Wilson. He made the decision. And so
on through a long list of questions.
And when he was asked for the general
outline of what had been done in matters
that had passed through his department
he pleaded poor memory and asked for
time to consult the records. Nor. Z y.
had been anything more than an agent 4
he had assumed responsibility Tor rrrnsr-