Edward
Mandell House, the son of a banker, was born in Houston, Texas on
July 26, 1858. He studied at Cornell University and afterwards returned
to the family plantation on the death of his father in 1880.
A
wealthy man, House was now able to concentrate on politics. A member
of the Democratic Party he advised
Texas governors including Charles A. Culberson (1895-1899), Joseph
D. Sayers (1899-1903) and S.W. Lanham (1903-1907). A close associate
of Woodrow Wilson, he helped him win
the presidential campaign in 1912.
On the outbreak of the First World War, House
became Wilson's personal representative in Europe. He visited most
European capitals in 1915 and 1916 but his attempts at achieving a
negotiated peace ended in failure. After the United
States entered the war in 1917, House was responsible for working
with Allied nations in order to organize
manpower and supplies.
House worked closely with Woodrow Wilson
and Walter Lippmann in drafting the
Fourteen Points Peace Programme. House
was a member of the USA's delegation to the Paris
Peace Conference of 1919 and helped draw up the covenant of the
League of Nations. Edward Mandell House
died on March 28, 1938.
(1)
Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary,
met Edward House in the summer of 1914. He later wrote about the meeting
in his autobiography Twenty-five Years (1925).
Earlier in
the summer Colonel House had been in London, and
I had seen him then. He had just come from Berlin,
and he had spoken with grave feeling of the impression
he had received there ; how the air seemed full
of the clash of arms, of readiness to strike. This might
have been discounted as the impression which would
naturally have been produced on an American seeing
at close quarters a continental military system for
the first time. It was as alien to our temperament as
to his, but it was familiar to us. We had lived beside
it for years ; we had known and watched its growth
ever since 1870. But House was a man of exceptional
knowledge and cool judgment. What if this
militarism had now taken control of policy ?
(2)
Edward M. House, diary (29th June, 1919)
June 29, 1919: I
am leaving Paris, after eight fateful months, with conflicting
emotions. Looking at the conference in retrospect there is much to
approve and much to regret. It is easy to say what should have been
done, but more difficult to have found a way for doing it.
The bitterness engendered
by the war, the hopes raised high in many quarters because
of victory, the character of the men having the dominant voices in
the making of the
Treaty, all had their influence for good or for evil, and were to
be reckoned with.
How splendid it would
have been had we blazed a new and better trail! However, it is to
be doubted whether this could have been done, even if those in authority
had so decreed, for the peoples back of them had to be reckoned with.
It may be that Wilson might have had the power and influence if he
had remained in Washington and kept clear of the Conference. When
he stepped from his lofty pedestal and wrangled
with representatives of other states upon equal terms, he became as
common clay.
To those who are saying
that the Treaty is bad and should never have been made and that it
will involve Europe in infinite difficulties in its enforcement, I
feel like admitting it. But I would also say in reply that empires
cannot be shattered and new states raised upon their ruins without
disturbance. To create new boundaries is always to create new troubles.
The one follows the other. While I should have preferred a different
peace, I doubt whether it could have been made, for the ingredients
for such a peace as I would have had were lacking at Paris
The same forces that have
been at work in the making of this peace would be at work to hinder
the enforcement of a different kind of peace, and no one can say with
certitude that anything better than has been done could be done at
this time. We have had to deal with a situation pregnant with difficulties
and one which could be met only by an unselfish and idealistic spirit,
which was almost wholly absent and which was too much to expect of
men come together at such a time and for such a purpose.
And yet I wish we had
taken the other road, even if it were less smooth, both now and afterward,
than the one we took. We would at least have gone in the right direction
and if those who follow us had made it impossible to go the full length
of the journey planned, the responsibility would have rested with
them and not with us.
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