PARIS 1919 by Margaret MacMillan Read Free Book Online Page B

could operate behind the scenes. In Paris, Baker called him, only half in admiration, “the small knot hole through which must pass many great events.” He rarely gave interviews and almost never took official appointments. This, of course, made him the object of intense speculation. He merely wanted, he often said, to be useful. In his diary, though, House himself carefully noted the powerful and importunate who lined up to see him. He also faithfully recorded every compliment, no matter how fulsome. 3
    He was a Democrat, like most Southerners of his race, but on the liberal, progressive side of the party. When Wilson moved into politics, House, already a figure in Texas politics, recognized someone he could work with. The two men met for the first time in 1911, as Wilson was preparing to run for president. “Almost from the first our association was intimate,” House remembered years later, when the friendship had broken down irrevocably, “almost from the first, our minds vibrated in unison.” He gave Wilson the unstinting affection and loyalty he required, and Wilson gave him power. When his first wife died, Wilson became even more dependent on House. “You are the only person in the world with whom I can discuss everything,” he wrote in 1915. “There are some I can tell one thing and others another, but you are the only one to whom I can make an entire clearance of mind.” When the second Mrs. Wilson appeared on the scene, she watched House carefully, her eyes sharpened with jealousy. 4
    When the war broke out, Wilson sent House off to the capitals of Europe in fruitless attempts to stop the fighting; as the war came to an end, he hastily dispatched him to Paris to negotiate the armistice terms. “I have not given you any instructions,” Wilson told him, “because I feel that you will know what to do.” House agreed with all his heart that Wilson’s new diplomacy was the best hope for the world. He thought the League of Nations a wonderful idea. He also thought he could do better than Wilson in achieving their common goals. Where the president was too idealistic, too dogmatic, he, House, was a fixer, with a nod here, a shrug there, a slight change of emphasis, a promise first to this one and then that, smoothing over differences and making things work. He had not really wanted Wilson to come to the Peace Conference. In his diary, during the next months, the loyal lieutenant was to list Wilson’s mistakes methodically: his outbursts of temper, his inconsistencies, his clumsiness in negotiations and his “one-track” mind. 5
    Clemenceau liked House enormously, partly because he was amused by him, but also because he seemed to understand France’s concerns so well. “I can get on with you,” Clemenceau told him, “you are practical. I understand you but talking to Wilson is something like talking to Jesus Christ!” Lloyd George was cooler: House “saw more clearly than most men—or even women—to the bottom of the shallow waters which are to be found here and there in the greatest of oceans and of men.” A charming man, in Lloyd George’s opinion, but rather limited—“essentially a salesman and not a producer.” House would have been a good ambassador, but never a foreign minister. “It is perhaps to his credit,” Lloyd George concluded kindly, “that he was not nearly as cunning as he thought he was.” House could not bear Lloyd George, “a mischief maker who changes his mind like a weather-cock. He has no profound knowledge of any of the questions with which he is dealing.” But Lloyd George knew how to keep his eye on the ends. House, who thought every disagreement could be worked out, did not. “He is a marvellous conciliator,” was Baker’s opinion, “but with the faults of his virtue for he conciliates over . . . minor disagreements into the solid flesh of