Philip Dru, Administrator [Library Binding]

Edward Mandell House (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0839807929 | ISBN-13: 978-0839807926 | Publication Date: June 1969

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...one difference between House and other authors of fantasy fiction was his attempts to put his principles into practice by insinuating himself at the right hand of power. Another was that House responded to political developments in terms of his own utopian fiction. Time and again in his diary House recorded events and related them to passages in Dru. Indeed, he was so pleased with apparent correlations that he later allowed his biographer to reveal his secret identity as Dru's author. His imaginary hero enacted tariff reduction, graduated income tax, and something akin to a federal reserve system, all of which became law under Wilson--without the dictatorship."
--Charles Seymour, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 1 1926

"House never lost touch with his fictional hero. For example, in March 1917, while ruminating over the probability of a U.S. declaration of war with Germany, House wrote in his diary, "Philip Dru expresses my thoughts and aspirations .... Perhaps the most valuable work I have done in that direction has been in influencing the president." Two months later he proposed that Britain allow America to take an option on British battleships after the war in return for the United States building destroyers to defeat the German submarine menace. While awaiting British approval, which never came, he wrote, "This plan touches closely upon the proposal I made in Philip Dru." In his book, the United States and England welcome Germany as an equal partner in an alliance, thus cementing "the comity of nations, a lasting and beneficent peace, and the acceptance of the principle of the brotherhood of man." This was certainly a far cry from the actual wartime situation in 1917."
--House Diary, 19 May 1917

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

About the Author

Edward Mandell House (July 26, 1858 March 28, 1938) was an American diplomat, politician, and presidential advisor. Commonly known by the purely honorific title of Colonel House, although he had no military experience, he had enormous personal influence with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson as his foreign policy advisor until Wilson removed him in 1919. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Library Binding: 312 pages
• Publisher: Gregg Pr (June 1969)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0839807929
• ISBN-13: 978-0839807926
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,376,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Important but poorly written, May 30, 2000

By 

Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Philip Dru: Administrator- A Story of Tomorrow, 1920-1935 (Paperback)

_Philip Dru_ is an extremely obscure political tract written in 1911 by "Colonel" Edward Mandell House, a key advisor to Woodrow Wilson and FDR. This is what makes the book so shocking. The book advocates the violent overthrow of the constitutional government and proposes a communist/socialist system as its replacement. Considering that the man who wrote this book had such a close position to the president, it's no surprise that some of the ideas in this book eventually became public policy.

Philip Dru, the main character, is a West Point graduate who eventually resigns his post and becomes involved in social problems. Dru is chosen to lead an army against the U.S. government led by a puppet president. When Dru gains control he throws the Constitution out the window and nationalizes industries such as the telegraph (remember, it's 1911) and makes corporations subservient to government. He promises a job to every American, and rewrites the state constitutions. Watch for the part where Senator Selwyn talks about how he used direct marketing, etc., to get his man elected as president. Most of what he used is standard operating procedure today. In this book, the people revolt over what he does!

I give the book a low rating because the style is absolutely atrocious. Forget about any kind of character development. It is a poor attempt to wrap up a political treatise to make it palatable to the average joe. If you can get around the cruddy style, there is some gold to be found. This edition is a reprint by the John Birch Society. Give it a shot!

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mein Kampf was poorly written, too..., March 28, 2009

By 

Southern Abintra "Southern Abintra" (Macon, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Philip Dru: Administrator (Dodo Press) (Paperback)

Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf" was poorly written, too, but no one would doubt it's importance. So it is with "Philip Dru: Administrator".

Certain facts, once denied, reveal how we, as a nation, got so far off track. One of those facts is the collusion between International Bankers, Monopoly Capitalists and Fabian Socialist Edward Mandell House.

This collusion resulted in the unconstitutional privatizing of our monetary system, under the guise of the Federal Reserve. The dangerous nature of the Federal Reserve is best summed up by the patriarch of one International Banking family:

"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." - Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

The importance of "Philip Dru: Adminstrator" is the insight into the mindset of those who believe in the New World Order, once denied, now freely discussed.

It is a testament to the dangerously effective "gradualist" subversion that America has been subjected to over the last 100 years. The "incremental" Socialism promoted by the Fabian Society since 1884...a little more each generation, leading us to their goal:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."
- Norman Thomas, American socialist

"Make haste slowly" - Fabian Society Maxim.

Philip Dru: Administrator can be read, FREE, at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8phlp10h.htm

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Blueprint for the future? More like a model made of Legos..., February 20, 2007

By 

Marc Chu "Demonsweatlive" (Falls Church, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Philip Dru: Administrator (Paperback)

After hearing and reading a number of astonishing things about this book, I had to give it a read. What I found was not exactly what I expected. While some sources have described the Dru character as a "sinister dictator", the truth is not quite so interesting. The book itself is nowhere near as interesting.

Upon opening the book to the table of contents, one can't help but take notice of the number of chapters in this book. There are 53 chapters in just 173 pages! For those of you who don't have a math minor, that's a little over 3 pages per chapter. And for some reason, many of the chapters are explicit continuations of the chapter before. What was the point of this? Why not keep the two chapters a single chapter?
Needless to say, the writing here is atrocious. The plot is paper-thin, the characters don't develop one iota, and a romance sub-plot rears its ugly head on the last two pages of the book! How was this book published? Why was it put into print? Therein lies the intrigue.

While it was anonymously written at the time, it is today well-known that the author of this book was Colonel Edward Mandell House (he gives a little hint in the text when two characters meet at Mandell House [yeesh!]), who was the virtual co-president of the United States with Woodrow Wilson. Wilson admitted time and again that House was his "alter ego", even to the point that House was given accomodations in the White House. Why is all this important?

Philip Dru leads a revolution against the United States government. Not a bad thing in and of itself, if the reasons had been more compelling. What happens in the aftermath, however, brings shudders to students of history. Philip Dru becomes dictator of the United States, without too much reservation. He tosses out the national constitution, as well as the state constitutions, and has them rewritten. He institutes a graduated income tax (which did not exist at that time in the U.S. because it was ruled unconstitutional; however, with the "ratification" of the 16th amendment just a year or two after the publication of this book, we got one for the first time and have lived under it ever since), forces popular election of senators, nationalizes industry, and reorganizes the entire government at his whim. And Dru is definitely portrayed as the friendly protagonist. If the First Lady were to write a book calling for revolution, abolition of the constitution, and a unitary dictator, would we worry? I sure hope so.

But more worrisome is the fact that all of these thing eventually did come to pass in this country. (Sure, the constitution wasn't abolished and rewritten. However, the New Deal Supremee Court made rulings that effectively gave Congress carte-blanche to pass ANY law it felt like, even those that explicitly violate the constitution [see USA PATRIOT Act]). Was House prescient? Did he simply see the tides of popular opinion swarming over the masses? Or was he simply one of the many manipulating the domestic policy of our republic behind the scenes?

The structure and execution of this book are amateurish at best, more likened to the writing of a 10th grader than any kind of real author. Perhaps that is the point. This book was clearly aimed at the unwashed masses. Every piece of dialog in this book espouses the benefits of socialism and evil of capitalism. But this effort is so transparent that it leaves us with nothing of any literary merit, and in its place only political ramblings of a clear Fabian socialist. These ramblings, of course, entail bringing up relevant issues and injustices (female suffrage, corporate exploitation) and packaging them with solutions that involve only the addition and centralization of power in the federal government. While those who educate themselves will see this work for what it is, the many people who read this book (not today, since people don't read, but back then there were probably more than a few) would end up buying into bad solutions for exaggerated problems.

There is absolutely no reason to buy this book. The price simply doesn't justify it. A reader will gain no enjoyment from it. This book only redeems itself in its historical context: it was written by a man who pushed Woodrow Wilson to sign the Federal Reserve Act, which destroyed our economy and continues to devalue our money to this day; to lead us into World War I, despite his campaign promises not to (the Lusitania was carrying English munitions and was a valid military target); and to attempt to sacrifice the sovereignty of our nation to a world governing body in the League of Nations, which our Congress rightly rejected.