Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-06-16
Real Estate His Speciality, In
stead Of Shrewd Trading
in Horses
BUFFER, NOT CREATOR,
OF PRESIDENT WILSON
i. Stands Before Head of Ameri-
can Delegation at Peace
Conference
POPULAR WITH HIS
COLLEAGUES AT TABLE
Simplicity and Frankness Fun
damentaI Elements of En- =,
voy's Character
TRIUMPH OF PROVINCIAL
Typical Traits in College Days
Sent Him to Cornell
Instead of Yale
TRIUMPH OF PROVINCIAL
By CLINTON w. GILBERT
star Correspondent Of the Evening Public
Iedrer with the Peace Delegation
in Europe.

in Europe.
Copyright. 1879, ov Public Ledger Co.
Paris, June 9.-(By mail. )-Colonel
House gave little luncheon the other
day at the Hotel Crillon here in Paris
to the American newspaper correspond
ents, the men who have been seeing
him every evening at 5 AS during the
Peace Conference and whom he wishes
to take to London with him, where,
as he says, he will ''go on the road"
with the league of nations. In the
course of the luncheon the colonel said ::
II should like to have it made law
that when nation goes to war its
governors should be compelled to serve
in the posts of danger"
Some one asked, "And when you say
that do you mean not only the rulers,
but the men behind the rulers?" The
colonel laughed.
This is the unreal Colonel House No.
H.. The colonel is not ''the man behind
the President. but the man before the
President. Mr.. Wilson is too big to
be made to owe much to any other man.
Colonel House is not the Presidents
creator, bat the Presidents buffer. He
is the man who makes relations possible
between Mr.. Wilson and humanity. 1t
is hardly too much to say that the
Peace Conference would have ended in
nothing more than gestures of with
drawal If Colonel House had not been
here to sympathize with the men who
found the President hard, unreasoning.
impracticable, gospel saint or an auto :
crat. He is the complement of Mr..
Wilson, the human side of an austere
intellect, the man before the President.
Colonel House, Real and 'UnreaI,
A book has been written entitled '"Tbe
Real Colonel House." I haven't read
Il, put suspect from what have been
.oid that the person you will find in it
The Unreal Colonel House." About
.ne real Colonel House no book could
oe written. He is too simple. It is
precisely because he is so simple that
people make mystery of him. The
world refuses to believe in simple things
lit demands other explanations. It gets
them in the shape of long volumes.
The French thought they had anotber
explanation and intended to give tho
colonel a dinner, probably as to tbc
best friend and only friend of France in
the American delegation. OF the col
onei should accept these best friend in :
vitations he would have one from, oyorr
nation at the Peace Conference and do
o. indigestion before the reporters give
MIN their dinner as the best friend NJ
the american press in Paris The coI ,
onei converted the French dinner into
one Tor the American delegation and
then absented himself from it. The
unreal Colonel House is a mystery.
The Colonel and the King
The unreal Colonel House is actuatsd
BY the common human motive of yo :
!. riety. l remember a distinguished and
senvious Democrat saying to me in
Masnington apropos to one of Colonel
houses visits to Washington as tn,
representative of the President: ooh
itnose British are clever! They mn,
House to bed in Buckingham Palace
They let him stick his feet under tbs
same table with a king. And noo,
House he falls for that sort of +hiun
oh, those British -
Probably the British did that r.,r
thing. But after seeing Colonel Houss
Tor several months in Paris 1 can no,
lmagine any one to whom it means IsSs
70 stick his feet under a kings tahIa
and sleep in kings bed than II doos
to Colonel House. uoes
In this vanity of the unreal CoIor.,
House--a man recently from Wssbinn
ton asked me HAS House got the b;.
heads They say 80, and that biogranh :
Of his bears it out. That book onybt
% have killed any one about whom n
was written. ~
FAT Paris House has been the only
man Of second rank who has had men ,
tsers Of the big four rushing TAMIL
TO see him. Clemenceau. OrIanSc
Qhinda, perhaps not Lloyd George. bni
sertainly such important men as Bal
four. Cecil, Venizelos (by many rated
as the abiest man at the Peace Confer
ence}, SHUTS (another of the great) .
hut If critical press is right House
has never forgotten that he was merely
the buffer, the man before the Presi-
dent, not the man behind the President :
fhe man who sits in the outer Office of
kreAtness.
Why He Went TO Cornell
n the biography of Colonel House a
1tery u told Of how he came to 20 to