The Invisible Government

HISTORY AND THE COUNCILPresident George Washington, in his Farewell Address to the People ofthe United States on September 17, 1796, established a foreign policywhich became traditional and a main article of faith for the American peoplein their dealings with the rest of the world.Washington warned against foreign influence in the shaping of national af-fairs. He urged America to avoid permanent, entangling alliances with othernations, recommending a national policy of benign neutrality toward therest of the world. Washington did not want America to build a wall aroundherself, or to become, in any sense, a hermit nation. Washington's policypermitted freer exchange of travel, commerce, ideas, and culture betweenAmericans and other people than Americans have ever enjoyed since thepolicy was abandoned. The Father of our Country wanted the Americangovernment to be kept out of the wars and revolutions and political affairsof other nations.Washington told Americans that their nation had a high destiny, which itcould not fulfill if they permitted their government to become entangled in3 DAN SMOOTthe affairs of other nations.Despite the fact of two foreign wars (Mexican War, 1846-1848; and SpanishAmerican War, 1898) the foreign policy of Washington remained the policyof this nation, unaltered, for 121 years-until Woodrow Wilson's war messageto Congress in April, 1917.Wilson himself, when campaigning for re-election in 1916, had unequivo-cally supported our traditional foreign policy: his one major promise to theAmerican people was that he would keep them out of the European war.Yet, even while making this promise, Wilson was yielding to a pressure hewas never able to withstand: the influence of Colonel Edward M. House,Wilson's all-powerful adviser. According to House's own papers and thehistorical studies of Wilson's ardent admirers (see, for example, IntimatePapers of Colonel House, edited by Charles Seymour, published in 1926 byHoughtonMifflin; and,The Crisis of the Old Order byArthurM. Schlesinger,Jr., published 1957 by Houghton Mifflin), House created Wilson's domesticand foreign policies, selected most of Wilson's cabinet and other major ap-pointees, and ran Wilson's State Department.House had powerful connections with international bankers in New York.He was influential, for example, with great financial institutions representedby such people as Paul and Felix Warburg, Otto H. Kahn, Louis Marburg,Henry Morgenthau, Jacob and Mortimer Schiff, Herbert Lehman. Househad equally powerful connections with bankers and politicians of Europe.Bringing all of these forces to bear, House persuaded Wilson that Americahad an evangelistic mission to save the world for "democracy." The first ma-