DIPLOMACY IN THE WAR

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 April 1933, Page 3

DIPLOMACY IN THE WAR

SECRET TREATY ’WITH U.S.A. Was the United States pledged by a “gentlemen’s agreement,” arrived at in 1916, to intervene on behalf of the Allies? .“.... The secret Treaty, made without the knowledge and consent of the U.S. Senate, by which Woodrow Wilson and Col. House chained the U.S. to the chariot of the Entente .... gave England the right to demand American intervention at her convenience and bound the U.S. to support the Allies unless victorious Germany accepted a peace dictated by her foes.” So writes Mr George Sylvester Viereck in “The Strangest Friendship in History,” published recently. Mr Viereck knew both Wilson ami House and has had access to the unpublished letters of the President to his intimate friend. The author states that the “gentlemen’s agreement” arose from conversations between Sir Edward Grey and

Col. House in 1915. A “definite formula” was reached and embodied by Sir Edward Grey in a. memorandum. “Armed with the gentlemen’s agreement, Col. House returns to Washington. The President assures him that he has accomplished a difficult task in a way beyond his expectations. . . On March 7, 1916, eight months before his re-election, President ’Wilson formally approves the gentlemen’s agreement which gives Great Britain and France a call on American intervention.” Time and again throughout the book America, is pictured as trembling on the verge of war with Britain over questions arising from the blockade. Even after the “gentlemen’s agreement” Wilson describes the British Government as “poor boobs” in a. letter to House of July 27, 1916. A conversation between Col. House and the King at Buckingham Palace early in 1915 is described in outspoken detail. “Impressed by the King’s energy, House asked: ‘I wonder why your Majesty refrains from speaking to the British public in the same forceful

manner in which you have talked to me ?•’ “‘I don’t,’ the King replied, ‘because my distinguished cousin the Kaiser has talked so much and made such a fool of himself that I have a distaste for that kind of publicity. Then, too, ours is a different kind of monarchy, and I do. not desire to intrude myself in such matters.”