AMERICA’S "MYSTERY MAN”

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20510, 28 May 1938, Page 18 (Supplement)

AMERICA’S " MYSTERY MAN”

Death of Enigmatic " Shadow ” of a War-

Time President

Known throughout diplomatic olrcles as “that eloquent listener from Texas,” Col. Edward Mandell House, famous war-time adviser to and “shadow man” of President Wilson, has died at New York at the age of 79. He had be’en ill with pleurisy for some weeks. Col. House was one of the most enigmatic figures in American statesmanship. He was universally known as Col. House, yet he had seen no service in any army- I —not even in the National Guard of Texas. He' owed his title to the fact that he had once acted as aide-de-camp to the governor of that State. Unassuming and modest, he was a man of few words —hence his title of that “eloquent listener.” What status this human enigma held may be seen by the fact that after he visited England and Germany in 1914 in an attempt to reconcile the two countries, the Kaiser declared: “The visit of Col. House to Berlin and London nearly prevented the Great War.” Bwlft Friendship Col. House, the son o‘f an Englishman who left Britain as a boy, was horn at Houston, Texas, in 1858. He went to school at New Haven, and then to Cornell University. He was an active worker in the; Democratic Party in his native State, when he first met President Wilson in 1911—the year before Wilson was elected President. His friendship with Wilson blossomed almost in a night, and it is on record that when Col. House remarked to him that they had known each other for such a short time. Wilson replied: “My dear friend, we have known each olher always.V Col. House moved to Ne\v Y'ork to aid Wilson in his election, and soon his position was such that the President described him as “my second personality.” Another phrase often used to describe this mystery man was “the power behind the throne.”

The “mystery man” had always a strange inkling of events <;o come, and a few months before the war he was sent to Europe to study conditions on behalf of the President, and report on the general outlook. He returned to report to Wilson that war was inevitable. When America entered the war in 1917, Col. House became the direct representative of the President in Europe. He had constantly urged Wilson to begin preparing for war, but for long the President refused to listen. He was the chief consultant with the special envoys of the Allies—Lord Reading, Lord Northcliffe, Mr Balfour, and M. Tardieu. In 1918 he collaborated with Wilson in drafting the “14 points” on which the proposal for an armistice was based. Col. House was one of those who signed the Versailles Treaty for the United States, and he took an active part in forming the League. During the conference he was hampered by illness, but he' urged Wilson by letter to compromise with the United States Senate to secure the entry of the United States into the League. But the Senate persisted in its opposition, and the States have never joined. In June, 1919, in Paris, Wilson and Col. House met for the last time. Observers had noticed a slight break in the apparently perfect confidence that had always existed between them, but when, after a story of a personal breach had appeared in a newspaper, Col. House cabled the President from London. Wilson replied. “Am deeply distressed by malicious story about break between us. and thank you for message about it. Best way is to treat it with silent contempt.*’ Col. House later returned to private life, and his “Intimate Papers” are considered to he a most valuable source-book for the history of the times.