Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House

ISBN: 0300137559

Author: Hodgson, Godfrey

Condition: New

A compelling account of President Wilsons most influential foreign relations adviser during the critical years of U.S. ascendancy to global power during World War IThe importance of Colonel Edward M. House in twentieth-century American foreign policy is enormous: from 1913 to 1919 he served not only as intimate friend and chief political adviser to President Woodrow Wilson but also as national security adviser and senior diplomat. Yet the relationship between House and the president ended in a quarrel at the Paris peace conference of 1919-largely because of Mrs. Wilsons hostility to House-and House has received little sympathetic historical attention since. This extensively researched book reintroduces House and clearly establishes his contributions as one of the greatest American diplomats.A kingmaker in Texas politics, House joined Wilsons campaign in 1912 and soon was traveling through Europe as the presidents secret agent. He visited Europe repeatedly during World War I and played a major part in drafting Wilson's Fourteen Points and the Covenant of the League of Nations. He tried to stop the war before it began, and to end it by negotiation after it had started. His greatest achievement was to lock both sides into an armistice based on American ideals.