The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, July 1980 - April, 1981 Page: 430
502 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Strachey had little patience for Woodrow Wilson's neutrality policies.
As he wrote to Grey in March, 1915, "Wilson I am sure is a well mean-
ing man but he has very little red blood in his body."4
Despite his opinion of Wilson, Strachey knew how influential Colo-
nel House was in the president's policy-making regarding neutrality,
and he cultivated the Texan's friendship from 1915 onward. For his
part, House saw the British editor as another piece in the mosaic of
influence and political intimacy that he was assembling in and out of
the United States. On his first visit to England during his 1916 trip,
House dined with Strachey at least twice. When the colonel returned
from the Continent in February, it was natural that the two men meet
once again.5
February 15, 1916, the date of their lunch, was an exciting day for
Edward M. House. The preceding evening he and Grey, along with
Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith, Arthur Balfour, the first lord of
the admiralty, and David Lloyd George, the minister of munitions,
had met in discussions that culminated in what became known as the
House-Grey Memorandum. This document envisioned President Wil-
son summoning a peace conference to end the war. In the event of
Allied agreement and German refusal to come to the conference, "the
United States would probably enter the war against Germany." As
Arthur Link writes, House "wanted to use American belligerency for
a larger and nobler purpose--the establishment of a secure and lasting
peace." 6
The military situation in early 1916 seemed to make a Wilsonian
initiative for a negotiated settlement a plausible action. Germany had
scored successes against Russia and Serbia in 1915, but had poor pros-
pects of winning the war outright in the coming year. The British
blockade was hurting, and pressure to resume submarine warfare was
intensifying. On the western front the major German thrust was to en-
4John St. Loe Strachey to Sir Edward Grey, Mar. 19, 1915 (quotation), John St. Loe
Strachey Papers (House of Lords Record Office, London). For biographical data on
Strachey, see John St. Loe Strachey, The Adventure of Living: A Subjective Autobiogra-
phy (London, 1922); Amy Strachey, St. Loe Strachey: His Life and His Paper (New York,
1930); and Harry Duane Bralley, "St. Loe Strachey and the Politics of Dilemma: A Study
of Political Journalism during the Edwardian Era" (Ph.D diss., University of South
Carolina, 1971).
5Seymour, Intimate Papers, II, 122, 126.
OThe House-Grey Memorandum is printed in Link, Wilson: Confusions and Crises, 134
(first quotation); Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (Arling-
ton Heights, Ill., 1979), 37.430
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, July 1980 - April, 1981, periodical, 1980/1981; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101225/m1/490/?rotate=270: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.