--- title: Robert Lansing url: https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/robert-lansing/ description: 3 verified quotes from Robert Lansing, Secretary of State, with sources. section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: a First World War field-intelligence collage of trench maps, wireless transmission logs and aerial reconnaissance photographs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-wwi.jpg) [Quotes](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/) · United States # Robert Lansing ![Robert Lansing in 1919](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/wilson-administration/robert-lansing.jpg) [Photo](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Lansing_cph.3b47713_(3x4a).jpg): Harris & Ewing, Public domain (Library of Congress: no known restrictions on publication) Secretary of State · United States On the regime page: [Wilson administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/wilson-administration/#robert-lansing) 3 quotes, oldest first. [Filter with other speakers](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/#speaker=robert-lansing). 1. > “When the President talks of "self-determination" what unit has he in mind? Does he mean a race, a territorial area, or a community? Without a definite unit which is practical, application of this principle is dangerous to peace and stability.” — December 20, 1918 · Private-remark · Paris — Private note written a week after the American Commission reached France, on Wilson's use of "self-determination" as a basis of peace. Lansing quotes it in his 1921 memoir of the Paris Peace Conference. — Robert Lansing, memorandum of 20 December 1918, quoted in The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), p. 86 [Source](https://archive.org/details/peacenegotiation00lansuoft) 2. > “The more I think about the President's declaration as to the right of "self-determination," the more convinced I am of the danger of putting such ideas into the minds of certain races. It is bound to be the basis of impossible demands on the Peace Congress and create trouble in many lands. What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent, disorder, and rebellion? Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it be harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically committed? The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until too late to check those who attempt to put the principle in force. What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered!” — December 30, 1918 · Private-remark · Paris — Private note on the reaction to the Fourteen Points among groups seeking hearings at the Paris Peace Conference. The Secretary of State disagreed with Wilson about self-determination. — Robert Lansing, memorandum of 30 December 1918, quoted in The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), p. 87 [Source](https://archive.org/details/peacenegotiation00lansuoft) 3. > “From all this I am forced to the conclusion that a bargain has been struck by which the Japanese agree to sign the Covenant in exchange for admission of their claims. If so, it is an iniquitous agreement. Apparently the President is going to do this to avoid Japan's declining to enter the League of Nations. It is a surrender of the principle of self-determination, a transfer of millions of Chinese from one foreign master to another. This is another of those secret arrangements which have riddled the "Fourteen Points" and are wrecking a just peace.” — April 28, 1919 · Private-remark · Paris — Memorandum written on the day the Covenant of the League of Nations was adopted in plenary session, after Japan withdrew its "racial equality" amendment and the Allied leaders agreed to Japan's claims on the Shantung peninsula. — Robert Lansing, memorandum of 28 April 1919, quoted in The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), p. 229 [Source](https://archive.org/details/peacenegotiation00lansuoft)