Continuing with the work of Douglas Reed, The Controversy of Zion,he focuses on 2 key players here,Balfour and House...

....Evidently Mr. Wilson had been closely studied by the group of secret men which then was coalescing, for neither Mr. House nor Rabbi Wise at that moment had met him! But Mr. House "became convinced that he had found his man, although he had never met him . . . 'I turned to Woodrow Wilson . . . as being the only man. . . who in every way measured up to the office' " (Mr. Howden). The standard measurement used is indicated by a later passage: "The trouble with getting a candidate for president is that the man that is best fitted for the place cannot be nominated and, if nominated, could not be elected. The People seldom take the best man fitted for the job; therefore it is necessary to work for the best man who can be nominated and elected, and just now Wilson seems to be that man". (This description, again, is qualified by the allusion in Mr. House's novel to the methods used by a powerful group to elect "its creature" to the presidency)

The Zionist idea coupled itself to the revolutionary idea, among the group of men which was secretly selecting Mr. Woodrow Wilson for the presidency, in the person of this Rabbi Stephen Wise (born in Budapest, like Herzl and Nordau). He was the chief Zionist organizer in America and as such still something of a curiosity among the Jews of America, who at that time repudiated Zionism and distrusted the "Eastern Jews". Until 1900, as Rabbi Wise says, Zionism in America was confined to the immigrant Jews from Russia, who brought it with them from the Talmudic ghettoes there; the mass of American Jews were of German origins and would have none of it. Between 1900 and 1910, a million new Jewish immigrants arrived from Russia and under Zionist organization began to form an important body of voters; here was the link between Mr. House (whose election-strategy will be described) and Rabbi Wise. Rabbi Wise, who was known chiefly as a militant orator, if not an agitator, in labour questions, was not then a representative Jewish figure, and nevertheless (like Dr. Weizmann in England) he was the man to whom the political potentates secretly gave access and ear.

The strength of this secret group is shown by the fact that in 1910, when Mr. House had privately decided that Mr. Wilson should be the next president, Rabbi [235] Wise publicly proclaimed that he would be that, and for two terms. This called for a rearrangement of the rabbi's politics, for he had always supported the Republican party; after Mr. House's secret selection of Mr. Wilson, he changed to the Democratic one. Thus Mr. House's confused "revolutionary" ideas and Zionism's perfectly clear ones arrived together on the doorstep of the White House. Agreement between the group was cordial: Mr. Wise states that (after the election) "we received warm and heartening help from Colonel House, close friend of the president. . . House not only made our cause the object of his very special concern but served as liaison officer between the Wilson administration and the Zionist movement". The close parallel between the course of these hidden processes in America and in England is here shown.

The secret of Mr. House's hold over the Democratic Party lay in the strategy which he had devised for winning elections. The Democratic party had been out of office for nearly fifty unbroken years and he had devised a method which made victory almost a mathematical certainty. The Democratic party was in fact to owe its victories in 1912 and 1916, as well as President Roosevelt's and President Truman's victories in 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944 and 1948 to the application of Mr. House's plan. In this electoral plan, which in its field perhaps deserves the name of genius, lies Mr. House's enduring effect on the life of America; his political ideas were never clearly formed and were frequently changed, so that he forged an instrument whereby the ideas of others were put into effect; the instrument itself was brilliantly designed.

In essence, it was a plan to gain the vote of the "foreign-born", the new immigrants, solidly for the Democratic party by making appeal to their racial feelings and especial emotional reflexes. It was worked out in great detail and was the product of a master hand in this particular branch of political science.

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https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/08/part-10-controversy-of-zionthe.html