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The House Papers in the Yale University Library constitute one of the most important and least explored of the major sources of documentation for what may be called the Wilson years in American history. House's voluminous diary, providing a clear and first-hand record of important events and confidential interviews, offers a backstage view of the development and application of the political creed that through most of the twentieth century has inspired the United States Government in coping with social distempers at home and with arrant aggression abroad.
Almost every evening during the eight most active years of his life House dictated to his confidential secretary and collaborator, Miss Frances B. Denton, a record of the events of the day. The significance of much of what he said was ephemeral, and one does not often find the flavor and detail of great literary diaries. However, many first-hand observations on both men and events were set down with objectivity and frankness when they were fresh in the mind of the diarist, making this journal of special value to scholars. Obviously of the first importance to anyone writing critically about House himself, the diary contains also many vital records of revealing conversations, in Europe as well as the United States, with renowned statesmen, cabinet members, and ambassadors of the early twentieth century. Such documentation is precious to biographers of eminent men of the times. Moreover, it merits close inspection by historians wishing to follow the injunction of von Ranke to write history "the way it really was."
The permanent significance of this source is being recognized by scholars and especially by those concerned with the Wilson years of American history. For example, many excerpts have been printed in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, whose editor-in-chief, Arthur S. Link, regards the House diary as "one of the indispensable sources of our knowledge of Woodrow Wilson and his time." "Monumental in its source is not too strong a description of it," is his verdict in a recent letter to the writer.
The most significant contribution of the House diary to history is found in its recordings of intimate tête-à-têtes with Woodrow Wilson. This scholarly president was wont to take to his heart and open his mind to very few men, and to no one so freely, when political matters were discussed, as to House. Thus the diary became forever indispensable to scholars of the politics of the Wilson era, and especially so when its entries are read in conjunction with other relevant diaries and correspondence in the papers of House's associates in Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Wilson kept no journal during his years in the presidency; and among the records of his two terms of office, in which there were no minutes of Cabinet meetings, House's daily dictations are especially valuable as a mirror of top-level politics at Washington. By studying the records of conversations that were held in what House called "graveyard" secrecy scholars can probe into he president's thinking during some of the most critical moments in the history of the United States and that of the world.
When Wilson entered the national political arena in 1911 with a reputation as a dynamic reformer on the Princeton campus and as governor of New Jersey, American citizens were pressing demands - sometimes violently - for legislation that would mitigate the social distress that accompanied the progress of invention and the growth of both irresponsible wealth and feckless poverty. There was fear of a general breakdown of civil order in the new world of the twentieth century. Entering the White House in March of 1913 without the support of a majority of the voters, Wilson determined to think constructively and to act effectively upon the most important issues of the day. Telling his family that it was harder to make history than it had been to write it, he felt a need for a conscientious confidant who could be depended on to serve his Presbyterian God unselfishly. He found the ideal comrade in the person of Edward Mandell House of Austin, Texas.
Bearing the honorary title of "colonel," which was conferred upon him in appreciation of his skill in managing gubernatorial campaigns in Texas, House played the game of politics cannily, and he played to win. Born in Houston in 1858, the seventh son of a prosperous planter and exporter whom he respected, he had forgone formal higher education for the exciting world of great affairs and political manipulation. He was a "boss" who could afford to be a benign patron rather than an office holder. His considerable influence, a Texan essayist has written, "grew out of his talent for friendship, for granting and receiving confidences, for making the voices of sympathy and wisdom sound harmonious in his advice."1
Through all the rough-and-tumble of Texas politics House sustained a vision of ideal government. In 1911 he took interest in finding a candidate for the presidential election of 1912 who could be depended on to work for the causes in which he believed. These causes he had endorsed by writing an anonymous novel, Philip Dru: Administrator, in which his fictitious hero, making himself a benign dictator, abolished protective tariffs, set up a system for social security, and arranged for the representation of labor on corporate boards and for a sharing of profits among the workers. Moreover, he imposed a graduated income tax, and developed a banking system that presaged the Federal Reserve; and he united the Great Powers of the world in a league for collective security. Studying current proposals for these and other reforms, House at the same time aspired to a level of ethics in politics as high as that of his father and other gentlemen with whom he had done business. "Most of it," he wrote of his novel, "I stand upon as being both my ethical and political faith."
Desiring to win attention by his affirmation of civic virtues, he derived some satisfaction from flattering praise by friendly critics; but it was clear that his book lacked both literary value and appeal to the reading public. In 1911, feeling the need of an eloquent voice of proven potency, and dissatisfied with the various candidates proposed for nomination for the presidency by the moribund Democratic Party, he turned to the eloquent Woodrow Wilson, who, in House's opinion at that time, might not be the man best fitted to be president, but was the best who could be nominated and elected.
Democratic bosses who were giving serious consideration to Wilson as a candidate arranged for a meeting of the two men at House's hotel in New York. In an hour of talk and in several subsequent conversations a true marriage of minds took place. They found a remarkable congruence in their ideas about men and measures. Afterwards House wrote to his brother-in-law: "Never before have I found both the man and the opportunity."
In the campaigns for nomination and election in 1912 House operated on the national level with practical effectiveness, as he had in gubernatorial campaigns in Texas. Working behind the scenes and through lieutenants in his state's delegation, he lined up votes needed to nominate his candidate at the nominating convention in Baltimore, and he took pains, eliciting the cooperation of Mrs. William Jennings Bryan to win the essential support of her husband.
Feeling the full weight of his new mantle the day after his election to the presidency, Wilson retired to a cottage in Bermuda - "to do a lot of thinking," he said. He took with him Philip Dru. Many of its prescriptions for reform ran parallel to those set down in Wilson's The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the American People.
During Wilson's first months in the White House he frequently called upon his "alter ego" in New York, where it was agreed that House should reside in order to give him a broad perspective over and above the Washington political scene. Soon House had established himself as a confidant not only of the president, but of officials around him as well. Wilson found him a reliable source of information, invaluable in purveying truth unwarped by flattery or self-interest. He addressed House in letters as "My dear Friend," signed himself "Affectionately yours," and told him that, with one or two exceptions, he was the most efficient man he had ever known. Both Wilson and his associates in the government confided to "the Colonel" things that they would not say to one another.
Without betraying confidences House prevented or alleviated friction. He kept informed about local political problems that the president had no time to study. Moreover, this solicitous friend seemed to the president always ready to respond with cheer for despondent moods and caution for moods of elation and overconfidence. House was scrupulously tactful in avoiding jealousy on the part of high officials who might be disappointed when he seemed to come between them and their chief and who might resent the influence upon their tenure in office that might be exerted by an outsider whom a popular journal called "the president's silent partner." Indeed, such embarrassing effusions made House wonder, as he wrote to his brother-in-law, "how much of this sort of thing W. W. can stand." Noting that Wilson was less receptive than he seemed to be to uninvited advice, House endeavored to insinuate his ideas, when they differed from his friend's, in a tactful way that led Wilson sometimes to accept them as his own.
Thus an understanding was established that survived many critical events in the nation's history, such as the framing and enactment of the New Freedom legislation, the election of 1916, the preservation of American neutrality in the early years of World War I, and the making of an armistice agreement that seemed to lay a foundation for a compassionate and enduring peace. All through the war years the close affinity of these two high-spirited men withstood the political buffeting that their exalted position invited, until their rapport was shattered by the president's failing health and the tragic events of 1919 that are recorded in my Wilson and His Peacemakers and elsewhere.
House's diary stands as an essential element to be weighed in conjunction with other documentation in constructing the history of the years of the Wilson-House association. The depth of the understanding between the two men, the vital import of the affairs of state that they discussed, and the faithfulness and frankness of House's recordings give to them a status of primacy among sources of American and world history.
In making arrangements for the preservation of his diary House was cognizant of the concern of professional scholars for an unadulterated view of what he had written. As the guardian and editor of his papers he chose from among many interested academic solicitors one who had been patient and not importunate -- Professor Charles Seymour of Yale, who had served as an expert advisor at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. This eminent historian, finding House's "sense of the scientific historical spirit" to be "very lively," edited The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, the four-volume work of which excerpts from the diary make up a substantial part. House himself in a brief "Prefatory Note" took pains to warn that the book "treated only of such matters as came within the orbit" of his own activities; and he wrote that his "chief desire" was "to let the papers tell their own story."
In entrusting his documents to the Yale Library House placed upon the conscience and judgment of Professor Seymour the full responsibility for arranging and publishing such of them as would dispel a mystic legend that had grown up, nurtured by the secretiveness by which House had thought it wise to screen sensitive political and diplomatic maneuvers. Seymour explained with biographical insight the Colonel's policy of self-effacement. "The desire to escape publicity was largely a matter of common sense," Seymour wrote in his introduction, "for in this way only could he hope to avoid political enmities and jealousies: ... It was also instinctive, springing not from undue modesty, for Colonel House was as coldly objective in judging himself as another, but rather from a philosophic pleasure in accomplishment rather than reward, and perhaps in part from a sardonic sense of humor which was tickled by the thought that he, unseen and often unsuspected, without great wealth or office, merely through the power of personality and good sense, was actually deflecting the currents of history."
House's record of the major battles that were fought in the councils at Paris by the procreators of the League reflects his appreciation of their enduring significance in human history. Yet he was not so elated by the prospect of realization of one of his most cherished dreams that he failed to give a trustworthy account of the hard work that Wilson and Lord Robert Cecil did and of the moral force that they exerted in the interest of humanity's great political cause. In describing the two critical sessions of the League of Nations Commission on April 10 and 11, 1919, in the first of which the American prophet shocked legalistic delegates by bursting into a torrent of eloquence in a speech that was remembered by the few who heard it as one of his greatest, House went only so far as to report that at one point in the proceedings Wilson "finally" lost patience with French obstructors and made "an impassioned speech" that was "full of eloquence and good sense" and "convinced everybody but the French delegates at whom it was directed." What appeared to be the determining factor, in House's view, is revealed in the diary's precise report of the arduous session on the second night, in which the Commission of delegates was driven to accept amendments to the League's constitution that were demanded by American senators. Of the stormy give-and-take in which French voices repeatedly protested against any amendment that might weaken American commitment to the future protection of France, House wrote in the diary on April 12: |
![[DIARY, REMINISCENCES, AND MEMORIES OF COLONEL EDWARD M. HOUSE]](banner.gif)
