W.H.P.

In the latter part of the month came Germany’s reply.  One would never suspect, when reading it, that Germany had played any part in instigating the negotiation.  The Kaiser repeated the old charges that the Entente had forced the war on the Fatherland, that it was now determined to annihilate the Central Powers and that consequently there was no hope that the warring countries could agree upon acceptable terms for ending the struggle.

So ended Germany’s first peace drive, and in the only possible way that it could end.  But the Washington administration continued to be most friendly to mediation.  A letter of Colonel House’s, dated October 4, 1914, possesses great historical importance.  It was written after a detailed discussion with President Wilson, and it indicates not only the President’s desire to bring the struggle to a close, but it describes in some detail the principles which the President then regarded as essential to a permanent peace.  It furnishes the central idea of the presidential policy for the next four years; indeed, it contains the first statement of that famous “Article X” of the Covenant of the League of Nations which was Mr. Wilson’s most important contribution to that contentious document.  This was the article which pledges the League “to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence” of all its members; it was the article which, more than any other, made the League obnoxious to Americans, who interpreted it as an attempt to involve them perpetually in the quarrels of Europe; and it was the one section of the Treaty of Versailles which was most responsible for the rejection of that document by the United States Senate.  There are other suggestions in Colonel House’s letter which apparently bore fruit in the League Covenant.  It is somewhat astonishing that a letter of Colonel House’s, written as far back as October 3, 1914, two months after the outbreak of the war, should contain “Article X” as one of the essential terms of peace, as well as other ideas afterward incorporated in that document, accompanied by an injunction that Page should present the suggestion to Sir Edward Grey: 

From Edward M. House 115 East 53rd Street, New York City.  October 3rd, 1914.

     DEAR PAGE: 

Frank [the Ambassador’s son] has just come in and has given me your letter of September 22nd[101] which is of absorbing interest.  You have never done anything better than this letter, and some day, when you give the word, it must be published.  But in the meantime, it will repose in the safe deposit box along with your others and with those of our great President.

     I have just returned from Washington where I was with the President
     for nearly four days.  He is looking well and is well.  Sometimes his
     spirits droop, but then again, he is his normal self.