THE ZIMMERMANN TELEGRAM

The essence of this exciting reconstruction is as follows:- The British had a verbatim copy of the German diplomatic code. The U.S.A. was still immovable on Wilson's paper fence of neutrality. The Germans, stymied on land, hoped to bring England to her knees by unrestricted submarine warfare, but were fearful that this might bring America into the fray on the British side. Germany's Foreign Secretary Zimmerman conceived the brilliant idea of having his own allies ready to meet the new enemy and made a formal proposal by telegram that Japan and Mexico join with Germany and in the postwar peace settlement that Mexico regain her lost territories- Texas, Arizona, New Mexico. The British intercepted and decoded the telegram, and used it with Wilson to demonstrate the perfidy of the Kaiser's schemes. It was probably largely because of this incident that America entered the war....The story is told fully, with all its cryptographic excitement, the agonizing of Wilson, the unrest and violence in Mexico, the intrigues and doubledealings of the Germans, the effect upon the Japanese of the discriminatory legislation passed in America... Every line is readable and tense and resonant of the climate of opinion in that period.