John Passos - Mr. Wilson's War

By letter and cable, using, with Miss Denton’s help, the private code House and Wilson had worked out for themselves to avoid the leaks to the press through the State Department that had been so bothersome during Bryan’s regime, the colonel kept in touch with the White House. The President and the new Mrs. Wilson laboriously decoded his messages, all by themselves upstairs in the President’s study.

“I am trying to impress upon both England and France,” House wrote from Paris by diplomatic pouch, “the precariousness of the situation and the gamble that a continuance of the war involves.”

His talking point with the French was that Russia might be forced into a separate peace which would allow the Germans to throw all their forces into a breakthrough on the western front. For the first time the French were beginning to admit, under the hush of the profoundest secrecy, that peace might not be a treasonable word. The French press treated the colonel’s silences with respect; he was the sphinx in the slouch hat.

Back in London, House dined with Asquith, Grey, Balfour and Lloyd George at Lord Reading’s. “The conversation,” he noted, “was general while dinner was being served … When the butler withdrew there was a general discussion of the war, the mistakes that had been made, and possible remedies.”

The colonel dropped a private bomb by suggesting that the Germans were getting ready to attack Verdun. (His intelligence was good: a week later the German barrage began along the Meuse which heralded the most desperate fighting so far in the history of war.) “My theory is,” House remarked in his diary, “that the Germans are still at their highest point of efficiency, and if they could strike a decisive blow, break through and capture either Paris or Calais, it might conceivably end the war.”

This was what he told the British Cabinet. “… My whole idea in leading the conversation in this direction was to make them feel less hopeful and to show them as I have often tried to do, what a terrible gamble they are taking in not invoking our intervention.”

“It was 10:30,” House went on, “before we got down to the real purpose of the meeting. Lloyd George began … I interrupted him … and said: … ‘Sir Edward and I in our conference this morning thought it would be impossible to have a peace conference at Washington, and I have promised that the President will come to The Hague if invited, and remain as long as necessary.’

“… It was now twelve o’clock, and the Prime Minister made a move to go. While the conference was not conclusive, there was at least a common agreement reached in regard to the essential feature; that is, the President should, at some time to be later agreed upon, call a halt and demand a conference. I did not expect to go beyond that, and I was quite content.”

House was in his heyday. He was so content that he allowed Laszló, a fashionable portraitpainter, to do a halflength oil of him, wearing the noncommittal smile under his mustache that delighted the London reporters, and the gray felt hat that so intrigued the French. Sir Edward Grey went so far as to incorporate the gist of their conversations in a memorandum.

The battle for Verdun had already lasted five days when Colonel and Mrs. House and Miss Denton sailed for New York by the Dutch line. The British cabinet thought the contents of House’s briefcase so valuable that they sent along a secretservice agent from Scotland Yard, entered on the passenger list as his valet, especially to guard it.

The colonel’s silences so impressed the reporters who swarmed aboard when the ship reached New York that even the Republican Tribune wrote: “House managed to be both elusive and significant … His glance showed that his silence covered a great deal of humor. He succeeded so well in the difficult task of being both taciturn and agreeable that he was even popular with the newspaper reporters when he told them nothing. Clearly one of the shrewdest of men.”

As soon as Colonel House arrived in Washington the President and the new Mrs. Wilson took him out for an automobile ride. “During this time I outlined every detail of my mission.” On the way back the White House car dropped him off at the State Department, where he gave Lansing an hour to bring him up to date.

Next day the President confirmed the tentative agreement with Sir Edward Grey. He himself worded a cable for House to send. “After some discussion the President took down in shorthand what he thought was the sense of our opinion,” wrote House, “and then went to his typewriter and typed it off.” The President authorized House to say he agreed with Sir Edward Grey’s memorandum of his talks with Colonel House. He preferred to insert in one line the word “probably.” “… If such a conference met, it would secure peace on terms not unfavorable to the Allies; and if it failed to secure peace, the United States would probably,” insisted the President, “leave the conference as a belligerent on the side of the Allies, if Germany was unreasonable …”

The colonel felt thoroughly justified. He had been telling the French and British governments that “the lower the fortunes of the Allies ebbed, the closer the United States would stand by them.” Talking to his dear friend in the White House, he repeated what he’d written him from Europe: the time for mediation was not far off. “I am as sure as I ever am of anything that by the end of the summer you can intervene.”

Feeling that he had accomplished his mission, House took the train back to New York. There he had his cable to Sir Edward Grey coded in the private Foreign Office code and transmitted to England. Writing his memoirs years later Lloyd George insisted that it was Wilson’s insertion of the word “probably” that ruined House’s scheme for mediation.

The President was leaving his project for the re-establishment of peace in Europe in the hands of his confidential colonel. He had other anxieties than the coming election. In Congress and in the newspapers he was beset with criticism by Bryan’s pacifists on the one hand and by Roosevelt’s interventionists on the other. Mexico was a thorn in the flesh.

The Woodrow Wilsons had hardly unpacked their bags at the White House before the Mexican imbroglio, which had seemed laid to rest by the mediation of the A.B.C. powers and the constitutionalist success in destroying Villa’s army near Saltillo the September before, exploded into the headlines. Mexican guerrillas, presumably on Villa’s orders, took sixteen American mining men, who were travelling under a safe conduct from Carranza, off a train near Chihuahua, stripped them and robbed them and shot them dead.

A roar for immediate intervention went up from Republicans and Roosevelt supporters, and even from a good many Democrats. The President kept the State Department busy sending notes of protest to Carranza.

At the same time Wilson was engaged in a speaking tour, talking up cautious preparedness to enthusiastic audiences through the middlewest where the pacifist spirit was strongest. The plain people made him feel that they believed in him. Letters poured into the White House commending his moderation. “You are keeping us out of war, Mr. President. We believe in you.”

He had been trying to convince his Secretary of War, Lindley Garrison, that the Administration could not move faster towards military preparations than the people moved, but Garrison saw things differently. He underlined his stand for immediate universal military service by sending in his resignation. Assistant Secretary Breckenridge resigned with him.

A few days later, Ida Tarbell, who had been writing laudatory articles about the New Freedom in the large circulation magazines, was invited to dinner at the White House. She remarked to the President that it was an anxious time. “No one can tell how anxious it is,” answered the President in a taut voice. “I never go to bed without realizing that I may be called up by news that will mean that we are at war. Before tomorrow morning we may be at war.”