Colonel House by Neu Charles E.;

Author:Neu, Charles E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2014-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

28

The End of the War

On the morning of September 21, House received a call from the White House, asking him to leave for Washington that very night. The weather had turned cooler and the president was eager to consult with his counselor. When Edward arrived the next morning, he sat with the Wilsons as they ate their breakfast and learned that the president had no interest, as House had suggested, in negotiating with the Allies, but had written a speech outlining American war aims. After lunch he read it to House, who suggested only a few changes, and the two men agreed that Wilson would deliver the address at a Liberty Loan rally in New York on September 27.1

While House focused on international politics, the president and many of his advisers worried about the precarious position of the Democratic Party and its prospects in the congressional elections in early November. Some Senate and House Democrats, elected from normally Republican states or districts in 1916, were now vulnerable, and pressing sectional issues—such as the administration’s decision to impose price controls on wheat but not on cotton—imperiled Democratic congressmen in the Midwest. As Allied prospects on the Western Front improved, Republican leaders, aware of the high stakes of the election, focused less on Wilson’s management of the war and more on his terms for ending it. Or as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge declared, “It cannot be a peace of bargain. The only peace for us is one that rests on . . . unconditional surrender . . . . [We] must go to Berlin and there dictate peace.” The rising tide of partisanship was engulfing leaders in both parties.2

During House’s two-day stay at the White House the president sought his advice on several pressing political questions. Prohibition advocates had attached a “bone-dry” rider to an appropriation bill, and Postmaster General Burleson and Tumulty—both ardent anti-prohibitionists—urged Wilson to veto it. House thought it best to leave the bill alone but was unfamiliar with the issue and “did not press” his point of view. Nor did House seem interested in the congressional campaign. On May 27, Wilson had declared that “politics is adjourned” for the duration of the war, but now, pressed by his advisers and by Democratic candidates, he told House that “he intended making a speech or writing a letter about two weeks before the elections, asking the people to return a democratic House.” Two years earlier House had been deeply involved in Wilson’s presidential campaign; now he “did not express any opinion as to the wisdom of this [a presidential appeal].”3

On September 27, three days after House’s return to New York, he and Loulie met the presidential party in the early afternoon at Pennsylvania Station. After stopping briefly at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Wilson’s motorcade drove up Fifth Avenue to House’s apartment at 115 East 53rd Street. Once in the apartment—where the telephone had been cut off to ensure privacy—the president and his counselor considered the appeal of the Bulgarian government for an armistice.

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