THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES (66 page)

But for our purposes, the most interesting aspect of
Philip Dru
is its international focus, and the extrapolation to the international arena of American domestic constitutional ideas of federalism and legitimacy derived from the consent of the governed.

The novel depicts a United States that, having conquered Mexico, allows it to develop its own constitutional institutions sheltered by an
American military and economic umbrella. All customs duties between the two countries are abolished and Mexico retains her armed forces, flying the American flag alongside its own. Using this loose model, Mexico then amalgamates with the states of Central America into one government, though separate states are maintained.

Under Dru the United States absorbs Canada, undertakes with Great Britain to protect the freedom of the seas, and negotiates a world federation committed to the maintenance of peace. Much of this is the standard utopian fare of the early part of the twentieth century; what is more intriguing about this dream-prophecy is its peculiar relation to the nation-state. States are to assume, vis-à-vis the international order, a role similar to that which the citizen plays in the domestic order. A constitution is envisaged that will govern the society of states, as domestic constitutions govern individual states. Each state is entitled to equality (in contrast to the great-power hierarchies of the imperial state-nations) as each sits within a kind of relaxed federalism, without “internal”—that is, international—tariffs or economic barriers. New states are encouraged to develop along their own cultural lines by means of constitutional systems of popular representation and national self-determination.

In his illuminating and thoughtful book
On the Law of Nations
, former senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan expresses the idea

Philip Dru
takes this expectation about the individual state and externalizes it to the society of states as a whole. When we speak of the New World Order today, it is the World, not the Order, that is new. The collapse of the Soviet empire and of European communism has made this a New World. But the order, as Moynihan points out, is Woodrow Wilson's.

Or is it? For at some point Wilson had to be persuaded to abandon the aloof, chaste isolationism with which he entered the White House and to adopt the broad internationalism with which his name is associated in the historical consciousness. We should remind ourselves that neither the tradition of the Democratic Party nor Wilson's background suggested any interest in other than domestic matters. The Democratic platform of 1912 touched on foreign affairs only in a single reference to the Philippines, and Wilson, in his first inaugural address, confined himself entirely to
questions of social and industrial domestic reform. Yet by 1917 Wilson had gone to Congress and stated:

Wilson was not persuaded by a sentimental novel to abandon the convictions of a lifetime. What had happened? And what relation do those events have to do with the larger story of the development of a society of nation-states, a society within which a civil war was fought from 1914 to 1990?

After the hard winter of 1912 – 13, during which Colonel House devoted himself entirely to currency and banking reform and the achievement of the legislative measures described above, he went to Europe on his customary annual trip. He carried with him letters of introduction from the president authorizing House to mediate a dispute between the United States and Great Britain over the Panama Canal. According to the Hay-Paunceforte Treaty, all states were to pay equal fees for the use of the canal, but in a statute, the Panama Canal Act, Congress had directed that the United States be exempted from paying any tolls and this, according to U.S. law, superseded the treaty. Great Britain protested, but there was little the international community or the U.S. president could do.

At the same time, a rift had opened up between the United States and the United Kingdom over Mexican policy. The murder of the reformer-democrat Francisco Madero had horrified Wilson. Madero's successor, his enemy General Huerta, had not been recognized by Washington. London, on the other hand, was only too willing to settle for any end to the chaos that had plagued Mexico since the beginning of the revolution and believed that in Huerta they had a man “with whom we can do business.” The end result of House's dialogue with Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, was an agreement by the British to withdraw support for Huerta in exchange for American efforts to repeal the Panama Canal Act.
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More important, House began a friendship with Grey that was to have historic consequences.

It had long been House's conviction that the Americans were uniquely suited to bringing about a period of détente, and even cooperation, between the British and the Germans. During a lunch with the German ambassador in Washington before House's departure for Europe, he had proposed that a sympathetic understanding between England, Germany,
and the United States would be beneficial to all concerned. In his diary, House wrote that he told the German ambassador how

House discussed this plan with the American ambassador to London during his summer visit to Europe in 1913. The basic scheme was to organize a system of arms reduction, followed by cooperative efforts to develop the hitherto undeveloped regions of the world,
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diverting competitive energies into work for the benefit of both the developed and the undeveloped world. House waited, however, before presenting the plan to Grey.

Sir Edward Grey had become foreign secretary in 1905. His appointment was not in the Lansdowne-Salisbury tradition of great wealth and aesthetic or intellectual sophistication. Indeed he had been sent down from Oxford for idleness, spoke no German and little French, and during his first nine years as foreign minister did not once go abroad. Grey vastly preferred the company of the wildfowl on his country estate to that of diplomats and, possibly, to human interaction generally. His shyness, deep sense of honor, and lay evangelical background suggest comparison with Woodrow Wilson, and like Wilson, Grey also took an instant and deeply affectionate liking to Colonel House. Indeed Grey's biographer, G. M. Trevelyan, concluded that Grey's relations with House were his greatest personal contribution to the policy that won the war and founded the League of Nations.
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Grey's policy until the outbreak of war was founded on four principles: (1) to maintain the entente developed with Britain's two ancient enemies—by Lansdowne in 1904 with France, and by Grey himself in 1907 with Russia; (2) to ensure that neither of these friendly relationships, however, slipped into an alliance that would close the door to an amicable relationship with Germany; (3) to protect the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom; and (4) to resurrect the Concert of Europe in order to guarantee European security against aggression in Europe. He pursued these objectives with courage and dexterity, but, as will be recalled from Book I, the pursuit of peace was doomed to fail. Germany, a protofascist nation-state, confronted France and Britain, two parliamentary state-nations, in a struggle to determine the grounds of legitimacy of the European state itself. There could be no Concert of Europe—the state-nation alliance of great powers—because Germany, a great power whose participation was crucial to any scheme of crisis management, was
determined to destroy that Concert. Germany was too dynamic to intimidate, too ambitious to cooperate with. Inevitably, what began as an entente with France and Russia became an alliance once Germany determined on war through Belgium, whose territorial integrity was a British vital interest of long standing. German indifference to the creation of such an alliance against her is a measure of her determination to destroy the prevailing system; indeed, had Germany not attacked France through Belgium (in order to outflank French fortifications), it is unlikely that England would have intervened.

All this, however, was still to come when House contacted Grey's personal secretary in November 1913 to propose that House come to Europe on a mission of reconciliation. He hoped to achieve lower levels of armaments among the great powers in order to avert a potentially cataclysmic crisis. After wintering in Austin, House asked for Wilson's blessing for this mission and, receiving it, set out for Germany on May 16, 1914; he would be gone for two months.

On his arrival in Berlin, House was shocked and alarmed. “The situation is extraordinary,” he wrote Wilson. “It is militarism run stark mad. Unless [we take the initiative] there is some day to be an awful cataclysm. No one in Europe can do it.” After lengthy interviews with a hostile von Tirpitz, the architect of German naval growth, and a somewhat more sympathetic von Moltke—the nephew of the figure discussed in Book I— House was entertained by the kaiser. For over half an hour they spoke alone, with the Kaiser presenting a classic ethno-national, fascist argument: the Russians, as Slavs, and the French, as Latins, would never be suitable allies for the English. Only an English, American, and German alliance, based on their common Anglo-Saxon racial heritage, would withstand the challenges of the new century. German political strength, the kaiser said, lay in being always prepared for war at a second's notice.
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House correctly saw that Germany lived in an excited state of fear, something the other European powers, including Austria, neglected to appreciate. From Berlin, House went to Paris, where politics was paralyzed by a cabinet crisis and the shooting of an influential newspaper editor by the mistress of a disgraced minister. After a few fruitless days, House, who fully appreciated the impact of local politics on the ability of a government to focus its attention on international issues, simply retired to London. There he lunched with Grey and told him of his discussions with the kaiser. House proposed that Grey meet with the kaiser during a regatta at Kiel, but Grey demurred on the ground that the French and Russians would be alarmed. When House suggested that Germany be permitted to aid in the development of Persia, Grey replied that it might be a good move in order to play Germany against Russia. It is clear that, at this point at any rate, Grey and House are speaking on the basis of two completely different
state “paradigms,” Grey for the imperial state-nation and the balance of power on the one hand and House for the newly emerging nation-state and a scheme of collective security on the other. House later proposed a development bank funded by the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany to invest in underdeveloped areas of the globe, similar to the World Bank of our day. Grey expressed enthusiastic (if mercantile) interest, but explained that quick action would not be possible. The Irish question dominated the cabinet, Grey explained, and it would not turn its attention elsewhere for the time being. Indeed, when news came of the assassination of the Austrian archduke, no anxiety was expressed in London. Only on July 3 did Grey respond to House, telling him to let the kaiser know of the peaceable sentiments of the British in order to pursue negotiations along the lines suggested by House. On the 7th House wrote the kaiser, but by the time the note was delivered, Wilhelm II was at sea, from where he was recalled by the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Wilhelm later remarked that “the visit of Colonel House to Berlin and London in the spring of 1914 almost prevented World War I.”
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The most that can be made of this statement, however, is that House might have thrown off the timing
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of the German general staff (as indeed the assassination did) had House been able to persuade the European powers that the new world of industrial warfare they were about to enter would mock their unrealistic ambitions. This was something, however, that even four years of horrific suffering could not do.

House sailed for Boston on July 21. As he was packing on the 20th a message arrived from Grey to the effect that the Serbian situation was now a source of grave concern. Despite this, and the fact that Mrs. Wilson was dying, House did not go to Washington but continued to the Massachusetts North Shore and waited to see Wilson until the latter came to New Hampshire after his wife's funeral. House's mission had been a failure owing to a lack of appreciation on all sides, including his own, of the nature of the conflict about to erupt. This failure to grasp the epochal nature of the conflict upon which the great powers were about to embark would persist throughout the next five deadly years and into the peace conference that followed. We can learn from House's vision, however, something of the world which we now inhabit at the end of that epochal war, when the conditions for that vision have finally been satisfied, even if, as will be seen, House's vision can no longer sustain the system it brought into being.