Mr. Bonar Law. He fought the Irish Home Rule bill and the Welsh Disestablishment bill strenuously on their successive appearances in the House of Lords, and procured their rejection by large majorities. But he was always ready for an agreement by consent over the Irish question, to avoid the " irremediable misfortune," the " overwhelming catastrophe," of civil war. He endeavoured to make the Government's Amending bill in 1914 more satisfactory by getting an amendment inserted to exclude the whole of Ulster from the operation of the Home Rule bill. When ministers would not accept this he became a member of the Buckingham Palace Conference as a last chance of a peaceful settlement.
The World War reduced all these issues to comparative insignificance, and Lord Lansdowne associated himself with Mr. Bonar Law in tendering at once their hearty support to the Government, as leaders of the Opposition, in rallying to the assistance of France and Russia. In 1915 he joined Mr. Asquith's Coalition Ministry without portfolio; and took the lead in pressing the military service bills on the House of Lords. He concurred in sanctioning Mr. Lloyd George's efforts, in the early summer of 1916, to find some satisfactory settlement of the Irish question, but he dissociated the Government from Mr. Lloyd George's actual proposals; and the failure to reach an agreement was largely attributed by Irish Nationalists to his insistence on the necessity of repressing treason and sedition. He retired from office at the close of Mr. Asquith's Ministry, the Unionist leadership in the Lords being then entrusted to Lord Curzon. In his retirement he got somewhat out of touch with public opinion, and published in the Daily Telegraph, in Nov. 1917, a letter in which, to the general surprise, he strongly advocated a negotiated peace instead of the policy of Thorough, on which the Ministry and the Empire were set. His ideas received hardly any support save from the small pacifist section. In subsequent years he took little or no active part in politics, his health having failed.
Lord Lansdowne's great and various services to his coun- try were rewarded with the K.G., G.C.S.I., G.C.M.G., and G.C.I.E. He was a trustee of the National Gallery, and chairman of the Council of the British Royal Red Cross Society 1915-20. His own university of Oxford gave him an honorary degree; and so did Cambridge, McGill and Leeds. He had two sons and two daughters. His elder son, Lt.-Col. the Earl of Kerry (b. 1872), a soldier who won both the D.S.O. and the Legion of Honour, was in the Irish Guards, and served in the S. African War. He was a member of the L.C.C. in 1907, and was M.P. for W. Derbyshire 1908-18. He married in 1904 Elizabeth Caroline, only daughter of Sir E. S. Hope, and had a family. The younger son, Lord Charles G. F. Mercer Nairne (1874-1914), major ist Dragoons, served both in the S. African War and in the World War, and was killed in action in France, Oct. 30 1914, leaving a widow and children. The elder daughter married the 9th Duke of Devonshire, and the younger married the 6th Marquess of Waterford, and, after his death, Lord Osborne de Vere Beauclerk. (G. E. B.)
LANSING, ROBERT (1864- ), American diplomatist, was born at Watertown, N.Y., Oct. 17 1864. He graduated from Amherst in 1886, was admitted to the bar in 1889, and for the next 18 years was associated with his father in legal practice at Watertown. In 1892 he was appointed associate counsel for the United States on the Bering Sea Commission, and later was American counsel or agent before several important arbitral tribunals or mixed commissions, including the Alaskan Boundary Tribunal (1903), the Hague Tribunal for Arbitration of the North Atlantic Fisheries (1910), and the Anglo-American Commission (1911) for settling outstanding claims between Great Britain and the United States. He was technical delegate at several international conferences, including the fur-seal con- ference (1911) at Washington between the United States, Great Britain, Russia and Japan. In 1914 he was appointed coun- sellor of the Department of State. When Mr. W. J. Bryan resigned (June 8 1915) because of unwillingness to sign the second " Lusitania " note, Mr. Lansing was appointed Secretary of State ad interim, and his first official action was to sign that note. He was definitely appointed Secretary of State on June 23 1915. In Aug. he was attacked by the Friends of Peace, representing several societies, mostly German-American, who declared that he was liable to plunge America into war. In his attempts to uphold American rights he was called upon to direct notes to all the warring countries. On Oct. 18 1915, defining safety for crews in a note to Germany after the sinking of the " William P. Frye," he pointed out that it was not sufficient that Americans be given an opportunity to embark in life-boats; it must be under circumstances that assured landing in safety. A little later he sent a protest to England against the commercial blockade and the detention of cargoes bound for neutral ports. On Jan. 18 1916 he addressed a note to all the European bel- ligerents, asking, for the sake of safety of those on board, that all guns be removed from merchantmen. He pointed out the disadvantage of a submarine in attempting to stop such an armed vessel for search, and emphasized that armament on a merchantman had every appearance of being offensive. In March this proposal was rejected by all the Allies. On Aug. 4 1916 he signed a treaty for the purchase by America of the Danish West Indies for $25,000,000. In reply "to a note ad- dressed by England to neutrals, asking that all belligerent sub- marines be excluded from neutral waters, he said that the nature of each submarine must govern the decision. He thus drew an important distinction between the " Deutschland," which had peacefully brought a cargo to America, and the U53, which had raided several ships off the New England coast Oct. 7 1916. In March 1917 he refused Government support to the proposed reorganization of the so-called " Six Power " loan for China. He declared that American bankers should not enter into agree- ment with foreign institutions which had more or less a Govern- ment connexion and might therefore have political as well as financial interest in the matter. The same year he notified President Carranza, of Mexico, that the United States would not adopt his proposed Pan-American plan of stopping the shipment of food and munitions to all the European belligerents. In Nov. 1917 he signed an agreement with Japan (the Lansing- Ishii agreement) which, while recognizing Japan's special inter- ests in China, provided for a continuance of the " open door " policy for commerce.
He was a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at Paris 1918-9, and, together with Lord Robert Cecil and Col. House, prepared a draft of the League of Nations in Jan. 1919. In a book issued in 1921 in justification of his own actions, Mr. Lansing explained that he disagreed with Mr. Wilson on various points, including that of incorporation of the League of Nations in the Peace Treaty; but he was overtly responsible with him for signing the Treaty, and on his return to Washington he urged that the Treaty as formulated be adopted by the Senate. On Feb. 13 1920 he resigned as Secretary of State on being reprimanded by the President for having called together the heads of the executive departments of the Government. Such meetings of the Cabinet had, however, frequently been called before during the President's illness, naturally by the Secretary of State as ranking member. Lansing's conduct at this juncture showed dignity and self-possession, and the action of the President was generally regarded as that of a sick and worried man. In Aug. 1920 he opened a law office in Washington. He was the author of The Peace Negotiations (1921) and The Big Four and Others (1921).
LAPWORTH, CHARLES (1842-1920), English geologist (see 16.208), died at Birmingham March 13 1920.
LASCELLES, SIR FRANK CAVENDISH (1841-1920), English diplomatist, was born in London March 23 1841, the third son of the Rt. Hon. William Saunders Sebright Lascelles by his wife Lady Caroline Georgiana Howard, daughter of the 6th Earl of Carlisle. He entered the diplomatic service in 1861. In 1867 he was secretary of legation at Berlin, and in 1871 was transferred to Paris as second secretary. After various more or less brief appointments, he went in 1879 as agent and consul-general to Bulgaria. He was created K.C.M.G. in 1886, and in 1887 was
