White, Henry

White, Henry, 1850–1927, American diplomat, b. Baltimore. He studied abroad and traveled widely. White—often called the first career diplomat in the United States—entered the foreign service as secretary (1883–84) of the U.S. legation in Vienna. He served (1884–93) with the U.S. embassy at London, and in 1896 President McKinley appointed him secretary of the embassy. He later was ambassador at Rome (1905–7) and at Paris (1907–9); as head of the U.S. delegation to the Algeciras Conference (1906), White helped in the settlement of the Moroccan Crisis between Germany and France. He was sent (1910) as a special emissary to Chile and in 1918 was appointed a commissioner to the Paris Peace Conference by President Wilson.

Bibliography

See biography by A. Nevins (1930).

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White, Henry (1850–1927) diplomat; born in Baltimore, Md. The heir to a distillery fortune, he was well-received in London society. He was a secretary in the U.S. embassy in London (1883–93, 1897–1905) and ambassador to Italy (1905–07) and France (1907–09). He was an influential member of the Peace Commission at the end of World War I, accompanied President Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference (1919), and tried to get the U.S.A. to join the League of Nations.