Unpremeditated Lansing: His "Scraps"

Abstract

However valuable emotions are to a man … they always pervert judgment. A truly wise man must be able to cast aside his emotions if his reason is to be free. The real hero in history … was always a modest and reserved man. Cultivate serenity of thought. Suppress impulse.1 To Robert Lansing, secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson from 1915 to 1920 and author of the above passages, the control of emotions was a matter of great importance. Daniel M. Smith, the most thorough student of Lansing's early years in office, describes Lansing as “highly inhibited,”2 and the reader of Lansing's own accounts of his role in World War I and the subsequent peace negotiations cannot but notice the principled aloofness with which the author treats the most controversial topics.3 Lansing's private correspondence and memoranda, as well, bear the imprint of an individual in whom feeling...