Part 10

"The old man," he said, "is very happy. He has got what he has been after. I can't tell you just now what it is. But he has got it at last."

He had been the donor, for Mr. Wilson, of the exact southwest side of a hair, the promise to submit, without recommendations, an alliance to the United States Senate, which had little prospect of ever being accepted by this country. The sight of the French Premier's happiness made him radiant.

It was not merely because representatives of foreign governments found Colonel House easy to see when they could not gain access to President Wilson that kept a throng running to his quarters in the Crillon; it was because there they found the line of least resistance. There was the readiest sympathy. There was the greatest desire to accommodate. He sought always for a formula that would satisfy the claims of all.

A man so ready to compromise is actuated by no guiding principle. Mr. Scott, the editor of the "Manchester Guardian", said when President Wilson was in England; "Yes, Lloyd George is honestly for the League of Nations. But that won't prevent him from doing things at Paris which will be utterly inconsistent with the principle of such a league. It isn't intellectual dishonesty; but Lloyd George hasn't a logical mind. He doesn't understand the implications of his own position."

Neither did Colonel House at Paris. The League of Nations was an emotion with him, not a principle. It was a tremendous emotion. He spoke of it in a voice that almost broke. I remember his glowing eyes and the little catch in his throat as he said, at Paris, "The politicians don't like the League of Nations. And if they really knew what it would do to them, they would like it still less."

But, for all that naive faith in the wonders it would do, Colonel House had not thought out the League of Nations, and was quite incapable of thinking it out, for he is not a man of analytical mind; and what mental power he had was inhibited by the glow of his feelings. His temperature was above the thinking point. Thus, like Mr. Lloyd George, he could make compromises that played ducks and drakes with his general position, since he had no real understanding of the League, which was not an intellectual conviction with him, arduously arrived at, but which possessed his soul as by an act of grace, like an old-fashioned religious conversion.

He was loyal at heart to Mr. Wilson and to everything that was Mr. Wilson's, his mind being absorbed into Mr. Wilson's, and having no independent existence. There are natures which demand an utter and unquestioning loyalty in those to whom they yield their confidence, and Mr. Wilson's was of that sort, as a remark of his about Secretary Colby will indicate.

When Mr. Lansing was removed from office, the country was astounded to learn that he was to be succeeded by Bainbridge Colby. The President communicated his decision first to one of the few who then had access to his sick room. This adviser ventured to expostulate.

"Mr. Colby," he said, "is brilliant, but he is uncertain. His whole career has lacked stability. He is not known to have the qualities which the Nation has been taught to expect in a Secretary of State."

"At any rate," replied the President sharply, "he is loyal."

At any rate, Colonel House was loyal.

The ego of Mr. Wilson demanded and received utter loyalty from him, a loyalty that forbade thinking, forbade criticism, forbade independence of any sort. Moreover, Colonel House was in contact with a mind much stronger than his, with a personality much more powerful than his. He was caught into the Wilson orbit. He revolved about Mr. Wilson. He got his light from Mr. Wilson, who had that power, which Colonel Roosevelt had, of irradiating minor personalities. Colonel House was nothing until he gravitated to Mr. Wilson. He is going back to be nothing to-day, nothing but a kind, lovable man, a gentle soul rather unfitted for the world, with an extraordinary capacity for friendship and sympathy, and that fine pair of eyes.

I remember at Paris the affecting evidences of the little man's loyalty to his great friend, of whom he could not speak without emotion. He was never tired of dilating upon the wonder of President Wilson's mind:

"I never saw," he would say, "so quick a mind, with such a capacity for instant understanding. The President can go to the bottom of the most difficult question as no one else in the world can."

House's endless "formulae" always bore the self-effacing condition, "if Mr. Wilson approves." "If Mr. Wilson approves" was the D. V. of Colonel House's religion. Too much awe of another mind is not good for your own, or carries with it certain implications about your own.

Colonel House's loyalty to Mr. Wilson did not, however, make him hate the men at Paris who stood across the President's path. The personal representative's heart was too catholic for that. He--

Liked what e're he looked on And his looks went everywhere.

He had a kindly feeling for the "old man," Clemenceau. He was a warm friend of Orlando, with whom Mr. Wilson had his quarrel over Fiume. He though well of Lloyd George, whom Mr. Wilson went abroad hating.

The Peace Conference was to him a personal problem. Peace was peace between Wilson and Clemenceau and Lloyd George and Orlando. Compromises were an accommodation among friends.

I never saw a man so utterly distressed as he was when President Wilson threatened to break up the Peace Conference and sent for the George Washington to take him home from Brest. It was as if his own dearest friends had become involved in a violent quarrel. He did not see the incident in terms of the principles involved, but only as the painful interruption of kindly personal relations. Men speak of him sometimes as the one of our commissioners who knew Europe; and Europeans, appreciating his sympathy, have fostered this idea by referring to his understanding of European problems.

But the Europe Colonel House knew was a personal Europe. The countries on his map were Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando. The problems of his Europe were Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando. He knew what Lloyd George wanted. He knew what Clemenceau wanted. He knew what Orlando wanted. That was enough.

His kindness of heart, his desire for pleasant personal relations, his incapacity to think in terms of principles, whether of the League of Nations or not, betrayed him in the matter of Shantung. Whether the Peace Conference should return Shantung to China, or leave it to Japan to return to China was to him, he often said, "only a question of method. There is no principle involved." The Japanese were a sensitive people, why should a kind heart question the excellence of their intentions with respect to China? Shantung would of course be returned. It was only a question of how.

The simple heart of Colonel House did not save him, either as a diplomat or as a friend. The failures at Paris plunged Mr. Wilson into depression in which he went as far down into the valley as he had been up on the heights during his vision--of a world made better by his hand. In his darker moments he saw nothing but enmity and disloyalty about him--even, a little later, "usurpation" in the case of the timorous and circumspect Mr. Lansing.

Colonel House says that he does not yet know what caused the breach between the President and himself. Relations stopped; that was all.

This is what occurred: Shortly after Colonel House had convinced the President that the disposal of Shantung was only a question of method he disappeared from Paris "to take a rest"; and it became known that after all he was not to sit in the Council of the League of Nations representing America, as Mr. Wilson had originally intended.

At this time, a close friend of President Wilson and one of his most intimate advisers, said to me, "The most insidious influence here is the social influence."

British entertainment of members of the House family had been marked and assiduous, and the flattery had had its effect, though not probably upon the Colonel, who remained unspoiled by social contacts to the last. Nevertheless, a member of Mr. Wilson's family had called the President's attention to the social forces that the British were bringing to bear. The President by this time was in a mood to be made angry and suspicious. Doubt was lodged in his mind. And when he found this country critical of the Shantung settlement, that doubt became a conviction; the British through social attentions, had wheedled House into a position favorable to their allies, the Japanese. The loyal House was convicted of the one unforgivable offense, disloyalty.

When the casting off of House became, later, in this country unmistakable, I inquired regarding it of the friend and adviser of the President whom I have just mentioned, and he repeated to me, forgetting that he used them before, the exact words he had said at Paris, "The most insidious influence at the Peace Conference was the social influence."