Edward M. House

Edward Mandell House (July 26, 1858 – March 28, 1938) was an American diplomat, politician and presidential advisor. Commonly known by the honorific title of Colonel House, he had enormous personal influence with President Woodrow Wilson as his foreign policy advisor until Wilson removed him in 1919.

Born to a wealthy Texas landholding family, House was educated in New England prep schools and went on to study at Cornell University in 1877, but was forced to drop out when his father died. Returning to Texas, House ran his family's business. He eventually sold the cotton plantations, and invested in banking. In 1892 he supported the gubernatorial candidacy of James Hogg, and when he won office, House became progressively more involved in politics as a Bourbon Democrat who favored conservative business and banking interests. He was a supporter of all the governors from 1894 to 1906 but moved to New York City about 1902. In 1912 Colonel House published anonymously a novel Philip Dru: Administrator, in which the title character leads the democratic western U.S. in a civil war against the plutocratic East, and becomes the dictator of America. Dru as dictator imposes a series of reforms that resemble the Bull Moose platform of 1912 and then vanishes.

House became a close friend and supporter of New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson in 1911, and helped him win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912. He became an intimate of Wilson without holding any official role and helped him set up his administration. House was even provided living quarters within the White House. After Wilson's first wife died in 1914 the President was even closer to House. However, Wilson's second wife disliked House and his position weakened. House threw himself into world affairs, promoting Wilson's goal of brokering a peace to end World War I. He was enthusiastic but lacked deep insight into European affairs and was misled by British diplomats. After the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915, tension escalated with Germany and U.S. neutrality was precarious. House decided the war was an epic battle between democracy and autocracy; he argued the United States ought to help Britain and France win a limited Allied victory. However, Wilson still insisted on neutrality.

Wilson and his closest advisors, House and Secretary of State Robert Lansing increasingly realized that Germany threatened both the idealistic and materialistic interests of the nation. By 1917 they viewed Germany as the incarnation of militarism and believed Prussian autocracy needed to be eliminated to make democracy and peace possible. They also viewed Germany as a threat to American commerce on the high seas and to America's internal security through its propaganda and espionage activities in Mexico.

Wilson had House assemble the "Inquiry" — a team of academic experts to devise efficient postwar solutions to all the world's problems. In September 1918 Wilson gave House the responsibility for preparing a constitution for a League of Nations. In October 1918, when Germany petitioned for peace based on the Fourteen Points, Wilson charged House with working out details of an armistice with the Allies.

House played a major role as Wilson's chief advisor at the Versailles peace conference in 1919. House mishandled Italy at Versailles, exhibiting indifference, ignorance, distrust, and miscommunication that made relations between Italy and the United States difficult, ultimately leading to the Fiume crisis at the 1919 Versailles peace conference.

Colonel House served on the League of Nations Commission on Mandates, with historian George Louis Beer as adviser. Throughout 1919, House urged Wilson to work with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to achieve ratification of the Versailles Treaty.

However the conference revealed serious policy disagreements between Wilson and House. Even worse were personality conflicts. Wilson had become much more intolerant and systematically broke with one after another of his closest advisors. When Wilson returned home in February 1919, House took his place on the Council of Ten where he negotiated compromises unacceptable to Wilson. In mid-March, Wilson returned to Paris and lost confidence in House, relegating him to the sidelines.

In the 1920s House strongly supported U.S. membership in the League of Nations and the World Court, the Permanent Court of International Justice. In 1932 he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt without joining the inner circle. He became disillusioned with the New Deal but did so privately.

References

• George, Alexander L. and Juliette L. George. Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (1964) a controversial psychological study
• Hodgson, Godfrey. Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House (2006), the standard biography
• Lasch, Christopher. The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type (1965)
• Neu, Charles E. "House, Edward Mandell"; American National Biography 2000. online
• Walworth, Arthur. Wilson and His Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (1986)
• Williams, Joyce Grigsby. Colonel House and Sir Edward Grey (1984)

Primary sources

• Edward Mandell House, Philip Dru: Administrator: A Story Of Tomorrow 1920-1935 [1], 1910
• Edward Mandell House & Charles Seymour. What Really Happened at Paris, 1921
• Edward House, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House ed by Charles Seymour, ed. (1926-28)
• Link, Arthur C. ed. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (69 vol), included hundreds of letters and memoranda between House and Wilson; available in large academic libraries

---