At 3 A. M. (Berlin time) on January 19, 1917, the following message was sent by wireless to Count von Bernstorff from the Foreign Office:
"Berlin, January 19, 1917.
"On the first of February we intend to begin submarine warfare unrestricted. In spite of this it is our endeavor to keep neutral the United States of America.
"If this is not successful we propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and together shall make peace. We shall give general financial support and it is understood that Mexico is to recover the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. The details are left to you for settlement.
"You are also instructed to inform the president of Mexico of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain there will be an outbreak of war with the United States and suggest that the President of Mexico on his own initiative should communicate with Japan suggesting adherence at once to this plan; at the same time offer to mediate between Germany and Japan.
"Please call to the attention of the President of Mexico that the employment of ruthless submarine warfare now promises to compel England to make peace in a few months.
"(Signed) Zimmermann."
This document was decoded from the official dictionary cipher and laid in the hands of President Wilson almost immediately following the rupture of diplomatic relations. It was made public on February 28, when the public temper was at whitest heat. Mexico did not repudiate the note at once, and four days later despatched a denial of having received any such proposal as Zimmermann had suggested. Eckhart was forcing Carranza's hand with the lure of the projected Central American enterprise already outlined. (Eckhart had had Carranza so completely under his influence at one time that when the United States despatched to Mexico a friendly note warning her of the presence of German submarines in the Gulf, Mexico retorted—at Eckhart's literal dictation—that the United States might do well to ask the British Navy why it did not prevent German undersea craft from approaching the Americas.) The month of March fled by, and America went to war; since that date no official expression except one of praise for Mexico's attitude of amiable neutrality has issued from Washington.
Just as the proximity of Mexico to the United States had for a number of years past carried with it the possibility, almost the certainty, of differences between the two countries, rising out of the temperamental differences of their peoples, so for a longer period had Ireland and England suffered for their contiguity. It is a truism to remark that the Irishman cherishes his national grievances, but that characteristic accounts for a further phase of German intrigue on American soil. Hatred of England sent many thousands of Irish to the United States in the past fifty years. They found it a country to their liking, which England was not, and although they had become indissolubly attached to their adopted land, there were in America in 1914 (and there are in 1918) numerous Irish who had no dearer wish than that England come off second best in the great war. Allies after Germany's own heart they were, therefore. They had been cultivated long since: in 1909, when plans were being made for a centenary celebration in 1914 of the peace that had reigned between the United States and England, German-American and Irish-American interests began to raise a structure of their own, exploiting the prominence which certain Germans, such as Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz, had enjoyed in the construction of the nation. The programme of these interests included the erection of elaborate memorials over the graves of prominent German Americans, the dissemination of legends of German heroes in America, and more practically the frustrating of the projected Peace Centenary.
Many of the organizations thus united for a practical purpose found a clearing-house in the American Truth Society, of which Jeremiah O'Leary was the head. Although the Centennial Celebration itself was rudely interrupted by the advent of war, the German-Irish acquaintanceship was nourished by the German propagandists in America. They observed with pleasure the circulation by the Clan-na-Gael of cards informing the Irish in America that troops from Erin were being assigned to the most dangerous posts and the bloodiest attacks and subjected to the most severe enemy fire in France, and that the hated British were dragging Irish boys from their homes to fill up the ranks. Between September, 1914, and April, 1915, funds amounting to $80,000 for the purchase of arms and the printing of seditious papers and leaflets were forwarded from America to Dublin banks, and then mysteriously were withdrawn. An inflammatory publication known as Bull, published by O'Leary, and not barred from the mails until September, 1917, went broadcast over the United States, inciting bitterness against England, and found a greedy circle of readers in the German-American population. John Devoy, a Sinn Feiner of standing in America, fanned the flame with a newspaper known as the Gaelic American, published in New York, and it is this American-printed sheet which furnished the Irish revolutionists with material for a part of the plot which they were preparing for fruition in the year 1916.
Jeremiah A. O'Leary
In 1916 Sir Roger Casement, an Irish knight, made his way into Germany. He was permitted to visit the prison camp at Limburg where some 3,000 Irish prisoners of war were quartered, and he moved about among them attempting to obtain enlistments in an army which was to effect a coup in Dublin to overthrow the British government in the Castle and to proclaim an Irish Republic. He circulated numerous copies of the Gaelic American to arouse the men. He was variously received. Some of the prisoners held their release worth treason—but only fifty-odd. The greater majority rejected Sir Roger's offer, and some even chose to curse and spit at the suggestion that they break their oaths of allegiance to Great Britain. He succeeded, however, in enlisting German financial assistance, and in early April, 1916, a cargo of captured Russian arms and ammunition was forwarded to Kiel and loaded into the German auxiliary steamship Aud.