Abstract
The position of Robert Lansing at the Paris Peace Conference has generally been ignored. Thus far no attempt has been made to give serious consideration to Lansing’s role as a peace negotiator. His relations with President Wilson have been variously discussed though none of the accounts, on the whole, appear satisfactory. Needless to say, the relations of Lansing and Colonel House at the Peace Conference have been too largely ignored. | This thesis has endeavored to break ground hitherto unexplored. It has undertaken to examine critically, on the one hand, the position of Lansing at the Peace Congress, and in the more than thirty pages on Lansing and Colonel House, I have attempted to examine the substance of their relations during the weary months of negotiations at Paris. | Robert Lansing has been regarded as a mere errand boy to Wilson and Colonel House; others maintain that he served in an important capacity at the policy making level. Samuel Flagg Bemis and Richard van Alstyne held contradictory views on Lansing’s career as Secretary of State. It has been, therefore, the object of the present research to provide a better understanding of what Lansing did accomplish at Paris and what he did not. It also sets the task of understanding the Lansing-House relationship without which their relations with President Wilson cannot adequately be explained.