THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES (145 page)
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Authors: Philip Bobbitt
29
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 1, 240 (diary date 5/9/13).
30
. Almost identical to a plan set out in
Philip Dru.
31
. G. M. Trevelyan,
Grey of Fallodon
(Longmans, Green, 1946), 271.
32
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 1, 262.
33
. Ibid., 274 – 275.
34
. Indeed, Spring-Rice, the British ambassador to the United States, thought that House's mission had precipitated the German action toward Austria because it signaled to the war party in Berlin that U.S. mediation might weaken their hand with the kaiser.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. I, 286 – 287.
35
. Ibid.
36
. George W. Egerton,
Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy, Politics and International Organization, 1914 – 1919
(University of North Carolina Press, 1978), citing Grey to Spring-Rice, December 22, 1914, F.O. 800/84. See also Trevelyan, 314 – 315. House's initial reply—that the United States could not become a party to any agreement binding members to enforce the observance of treaties, see Egerton, 25—seems to have been based on constitutional grounds having to do with the war powers of the executive. See Philip Bobbitt, “War Powers: An Essay on John Hart Ely's War and Responsibility: Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath,”
Michigan Law Review
92 (1994): 1364; (arguing that the United States can go to war on the basis of a ratified treaty without further congressional action); see also Philip Bobbitt,
Three Dogmas of Sovereignty
(noting that Congress can also supersede a treaty by statute and thus that the U.S. treaty commitment is only conditional, posing the possibility that U.S. constitutional law—the basis of congressional supersession—might come into conflict with doctrines of international law, e.g.,
pacta sunt servanda
).
37
.
The Nation
, March 14, 1914, quoted in A.J.P. Taylor,
The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792 – 1939
(Indiana University Press, 1958), 115.
38
. Egerton, 25.
39
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. I, 364.
40
. Zimmerman to House, March 21, 1915.
41
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 1, 433 – 434.
42
. House Files, Yale University.
43
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 2, 89.
44
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 2, 90 – 91.
45
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 2, 98.
46
. Hildebrand in
Profiles in Power
, 17.
47
. Patrick Devlin,
Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality
(Oxford University Press, 1974), 473.
48
. Oliver W. Holmes, Jr., “A Soldier's Faith: An address delivered on Memorial Day, May 30, 1895, at a meeting called by the graduating class of Harvard University” (Research Publications, 1984). On this change, as on so many other subjects, Michael Howard has written with insight. See Michael Howard,
The Causes of War and Other Essays
, 27.
49
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 2, 359.
50
. “The Making of a President,” in
Philip Dru
, 89 – 90.
51
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 2, 359 (just as, in 1996, President Clinton ran for governor, as it were, on issues of crime, welfare reform, and the domestic economy).
52
. No Democratic candidate save Madison and Buchanan had won the presidency without New York.
53
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 2, 361.
54
. Devlin, 686.
55
. Woodrow Wilson, “An Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” April 2, 1917, in
Papers of Woodrow Wilson
, vol. 41, ed. Arthur S. Link (Princeton University Press, 1966 – 1992), 526 – 527.
56
. Devlin, 679.
57
.
New York Times
, September 4, 1918; see also U.S. Cong. Rec., 2d sess., vol. LVI, part 10, p. 9875 (Sept. 3, 1918).
58
. The quoted passage above, see TAN 559, describing the organization of the campaign is taken from Selwyn and almost perfectly tracks House's memo to Wilson. Compare the following extracts, the first from
Philip Dru
, the second a campaign memo by House from June 1916.
“He began by eliminating all the states he knew the opposition party would certainly carry, but he told the party leaders there to claim that a revolution was brewing, and that a landslide would follow at the election. This would keep his antagonists busy and make them less effective elsewhere.
“He also ignored the states where his side was sure to win. In this way he was free to give his entire thoughts to the twelve states that were debatable, and upon whose votes the election would turn. He divided each of these states into units containing five thousand voters, and, at the national headquarters, he placed one man in charge of each unit. Of the five thousand, he roughly calculated there would be two thousand voters that no kind of persuasion could turn from his party and two thousand that could not be changed from the opposition. This would leave one thousand doubtful ones to win over. So he had a careful poll made in each unit, and eliminated the strictly unpersuadable partymen, and got down to a complete analysis of the debatable one thousand. Information was obtained as to their race, religion, occupation and former political predilection. It was easy then to know how to reach each individual by literature, by persuasion or perhaps by some more subtle argument. No mistake was made by sending the wrong letter or the wrong man to any of the desired one thousand.
“In the states so divided, there was, at the local headquarters, one man for each unit just as at the national headquarters. So these two had only each other to consider, and their duty was to bring to Rockland a majority of the one thousand votes within their charge. The local men gave the conditions, the national men gave the proper literature and advice, and the local men then applied it. The money that it cost to maintain such an organization was more than saved from the waste that would have occurred under the old method.” E. M. House,
Philip Dru: Administra-tor
(Huebsch, 1912), 89–90.“House's Plan of Campaign, June 20, 1916. In preparing the organization I would suggest that the following States be classified in this way:
“Class 1. Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Wyoming, Arizona, and New Mexico.
“Class 2. Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington.
“Class 3. Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa.
“We should put forth our maximum effort in the States of Class 1, a strong effort in those of Class 2, and a lesser effort in those of Class 3.
“There are seven states in Class 1 of prime importance, which we should and must carry. These States should be divided into units of not larger than 100,000 voters.
“By having the State organizations cooperate closely with the national organization, it will not be over-difficult to have the certain Republican and certain Democratic voters of these units segregated. This can be done by writing to the
precinct chairmen in those units and obtaining from them lists of the entire electorate, putting the absolutely certain Republicans and absolutely certain Democrats in one class and the fluctuating voters in another.“This independent vote should be classified as to race, religion, and former affiliations. Roughly speaking, we must assume that in a unit of 100,000 voters, eighty per cent of them will be unchangeable voters, which would leave twenty per cent that can be influenced by argument.
“The size of these units must necessarily depend upon the size of our campaign fund. If it is small, a larger unit will have to be considered; if sufficient money is raised, a smaller unit can be made. The smaller the unit the more successful, of course, will be the result.
“Literature, letters in sealed envelopes, and personal appeals should be made to each of these doubtful voters.
“One member of the Campaign Committee should be placed in charge of the organization of these units, with nothing else to do. He, in turn, should place one man in charge of each unit. The duty of this man should be to keep in touch not only with the State Executive Committee of his particular unit, but also with each one of the doubtful voters in that unit.”
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 2, 361 – 362.
59
.
Philip Dru
, 44 – 45
60
. Ronald Steel,
Walter Lippmann and the American Century
(Little, Brown, 1980), 127, n. 18
61
. Steel, 166.
62
. Steel, 130.
63
. Steel, 125.
64
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 3, 316, et seq.
65
. Eugene V. Rostow,
Toward Managed Peace: The National Security Interests of the United States, 1759 to the Present
(Yale University Press, 1993), 218.
66
. W. M. Knight Patterson,
Germany from Defeat to Conquest
(Allen & Unwin, 1945), 137.
67
. Woodrow Wilson, “President Wilson's Address to Congress Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances,” Joint Session, February 11, 1918,” in
The Messages and Papers of Woodrow Wilson
, vol. 1 (Review of Reviews Corporation, 1924), 475.
68
. Paul M. Kennedy,
Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
, 272.
69
. Arthur Bryant,
Unfinished Victory
, 32, noted in Roy Denman,
Missed Chances
(Cassell, 1993), Chapter 2, note 3.
70
. Roy Denman,
Missed Chances
, 31.
71
. Denman, 32.
72
. House Files, Yale University.
73
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 4, 361.
74
.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, vol. 4, 362.
75
. Edith B. Wilson,
My Memoir
(Bobbs-Merrill, 1939), 245 – 246.
76
. See A. H. Robertson,
Human Rights in the World: An Introduction to the Study of the International Protection of Human Rights
(New York: St. Martin's, 1982), 118 – 125.
77
. H. Kissinger, “The New Face of Diplomacy: Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles,
Diplomacy
(Simon & Schuster, 1994), 218 – 245. My treatment is completely at odds with the charge of Colonel House's alleged agreement to sidetrack the league into a separate “annex” in order to conclude the conference, a charge that appeared conspicuously in Mrs. Wilson's
Memoirs
and in an article by her confidant, Wilson's physician, and that has now regrettably become an accepted part of the received history of this
period. Not only does Mrs. Wilson's view lead to many historiographical anomalies, it wholly misreads House's tactics, which endeavored to save the Wilsonian program.
