October 29, 1918

House received his credentials at the White House on October the fourteenth (1918). Several days before that, aware of the mission upon which he was about to set out and impressed with the fact from the day that the Bulgars capitulated to the Army of the East (September 29th) that more local knowledge was needed than he possessed, he sent a cable to Pershing asking that someone familiar with Balkan conditions be attached to his staff. This cable resulted in my recall from the 26th Division and my being attached for duty with the Armistice Commission and the Peace Delegation.

The colonel picked me up exactly where our relations had ended in Berlin:

“I’m afraid I shall want you to be at my beck and call throughout the Armistice proceedings. If this should leave any free time on your hands, which I doubt, I want you to keep in touch with the strange peoples from Southeastern Europe who are assembling in such numbers in Paris in expectation, I fear, of the millennium—which may not be so near at hand as we all hope. This is to be your job. Of course, when the Germans come, you are to be, as you were in Berlin, my interpreter and intermediary, and then indeed your hands will be full.”

[From this and another statement which he made to me a few days later, it is quite clear that House had expected to enter into direct negotiations with the Germans at an early day; and his disappointment that these expectations were not realized was very great. Bearing on this phase of the problem with which he and the other delegates were confronted were these, his often-repeated words:

“It took many of us to win the war, and each one of the powers will have to be consulted in winning the peace. In adjusting these different points of view, our principal difficulty will lie.”]