John Passos - Mr. Wilson's War

No. 130 (code used)

“Foreign Office telegraphs January sixteenth:

Number 1. Strictly secret. Decode yourself.

“We intend to begin unrestricted U-boat warfare on February first. Efforts will be made notwithstanding this to keep the United States neutral. In the event that we shall not be successful in this, we propose alliance to Mexico upon the following basis: To make war together; make peace together; generous financial support; and agreement on our part that Mexico shall reconquer the formerly lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. Arrangement of details to be left to your honor. You should disclose the following to the President (Carranza) in strict secrecy as soon as outbreak of war with the United States is certain and add the proposal to invite Japan to immediate spontaneous concurrent effort and at the same time use his good offices between us and Japan. Please call the President’s attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our U-boats offers the prospect of forcing England in a few months to peace. Acknowledge receipt. Zimmermann. End of telegram.”

British Naval Intelligence, which had broken this particular German code, intercepted the message almost as soon as it was received in Mexico City, but for reasons best known to themselves, the authorities in London took their time in transmitting the news it contained to Washington.

On January 22 the President was ready to produce the declaration he had been carefully preparing. At the last moment he decided to make his appeal in the form of an address to the Senate. No President had appeared before the Senate alone since George Washington retired in a huff from a heated discussion with that body during his second administration. Historian Wilson was again breaking with precedent to lend emphasis to what he had to say.

It was a Monday morning. The Senate convened at twelve. The White House gave only an hour’s notice of the President’s visit.

“On the eighteenth of December last,” Wilson told the Senators in his mellow tenor voice, “I addressed an identical note to the governments of the states now at war requesting them to state … the terms on which they would deem it possible to make peace.”

Though it demanded some stretch of the imagination, he declared that the terms of his note had been accepted, in principle, by both parties. “… We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war … Such a settlement cannot be long postponed. It is right that before it comes this government should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified in asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a league for peace. I am here to attempt to state those conditions.

“The present war must first be ended … The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must embody terms which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving … There must be not a balance of power but a community of power: not organized rivalries but an organized common peace.”

He had assurances from each group of belligerents, he said, that they did not intend completely to crush their antagonists. He must now make clear to all parties the implications of these assurances:

“They imply first of all that it must be a peace without victory … Only a peace between equals can last … The equality of nations … must be an equality of rights … No peace can last or ought to last which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed …

“I am proposing, as it were, that the nations … adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation shall seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid …”

His final words were moving: “I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged … and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely … These are American principles, American policies … They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.”

The first senator to jump to his feet and applaud was La Follette of Wisconsin. Democrats and Progressives joined in an ovation. Some Republican regulars were so carried away that they had to explain later that they applauded the President’s eloquence rather than his proposals.

The phrase “peace without victory,” which was to float as a banner over the aspirations of the liberals both in Great Britain and the United States, was culled from an editorial in The New Republic , a New York weekly financed by a wealthy Progressive named Willard Straight, where a group of ardent young optimists was at work reweaving the frazzled strands of the New Nationalism and the New Freedom into the New Liberalism.

Herbert Croly, then editor, wrote that hearing the President pronounce those words was the greatest moment of his life. Lowes Dickinson in England called the speech “perhaps the most important international document in all history.” Woodrow Wilson’s leadership of collegebred idealists throughout the Englishspeaking world was assured from that moment.

The last day of January, while editorial approval of the President’s sentiments re-echoed through the American press, Ambassador von Bernstorff called up the State Department at ten in the morning to make an appointment with Secretary Lansing for that afternoon. Earlier still he had transmitted an order to the crews of interned German ships to disable their engines. He had on his desk Bethmann-Hollweg’s note announcing the new German effort to blockade Great Britain.

Lansing carefully told the story of the interview in his memoirs:

“That afternoon I was working on a letter to the President in regard to the arming of merchant vessels on the ground that Germany was undoubtedly preparing to renew vigorous submarine warfare … Before I had completed the letter the German Ambassador was announced … I noticed that, though he moved with his usual springy step, he did not smile with his customary assurance. After shaking hands and sitting down in the large easy chair by the side of my desk he drew forth from an envelope … several papers … He asked me if he should read them to me or if I would read them myself before he said anything about them. I replied that I would read the papers, which I did slowly and carefully for … I realized that it … would probably bring on the gravest crisis which this government had had to face … The note announced the renewal on the next day of indiscriminate submarine warfare.”

Lansing remarked that he viewed the situation with the utmost gravity but preferred not to make any immediate comment. Von Bernstorff stammered out his private regrets.

“I believe you do regret it,” answered Lansing, “for you know what the result will be.” He added that he wasn’t blaming the German ambassador personally.

“ ‘You should not,’ he said with evident feeling. ‘You know how constantly I have worked for peace.’ ”

Lansing answered drily he did not care to discuss the matter further. Von Bernstorff shook hands and left “not at all the jaunty carefree man-of-the-world he usually was. With a ghost of a smile he bowed as I said ‘Good afternoon’ and, turning, left the room.”

When the Secretary of State arrived at the White House after dinner that night he found the President agitated. Wilson was still of two minds. He believed that von Bernstorff’s protestations that Germany still wanted a negotiated peace must represent some sector of civilian opinion in the governing circles about the Kaiser. Did this note mean that the militarists were completely in the saddle?