The Zimmermann Telegram Page 6

  Admiral Mayo, however, believing that American honor required a twenty-one-gun salute in token of official Mexican apology, as well as punishment of the arresting officer, issued an ultimatum answerable within twenty-four hours. Afterward he informed Washington of what he had done. Hardly knowing how it had happened, the government found itself plunged into a crisis from which neither Wilson, Bryan, nor Daniels could think of any quick egress in case Huerta refused to apologize. The hour appointed by the ultimatum came and went, but no guns saluted the American flag. Overnight the Tampico affair swelled into a national insult. Diplomatic hell broke loose, telegrams flashed, warships scurried to the Gulf, further ultimata clattered down on Huerta’s head like hailstones. He would not yield. Why, he asked with a wry logic, should the United States demand a salute from a government it did not recognize? Nearly beaten, facing ruin, pressed by a power ten times his size, he fended off the final moment by one argument after another until Wilson, horrified and helpless, found himself maneuvered onto a pedestal of national honor from which there was no climbing down except by way of war.

  Yet, caught on the horns of his own ambivalence, Wilson in fact welcomed the opportunity to oust the dictator Huerta and, as he saw it, free Mexico for democracy. He shrank from the use of force, but his hand reached out for the gun. He issued a last personal ultimatum to Huerta, which was due to expire at six o’clock on the evening of April 19. Military sanctions, in the event of Huerta’s refusal, were to take the form of blockade and occupation of Mexico’s largest port city, Veracruz, and the armed forces had been ordered to prepare for this action. Six o’clock passed without an answer from Huerta, but Wilson did nothing that night.

  All next day, April 20, Washington was in turmoil; rumors buzzed, headlines blazed. Wilson called the Cabinet at 10:30 A.M. and told them he was going to ask Congress that afternoon to pass a resolution authorizing the use of arms to seize Veracruz. Although, needless to say, he cared little about a salute to the flag for its own sake, he narrowed the issue entirely to that question and left everyone feeling distinctly uncomfortable. The President himself, recalled one Cabinet member, was “profoundly disturbed” and closed the meeting with a plea that if any of them believed in prayer he should use it now before a decision that “might take the nation into war.” The next moment, in one of those twists which often make Wilson difficult to follow, he told reporters waiting outside the Cabinet room that “in no conceivable circumstances would we fight the people of Mexico.”

  Shortly after the Cabinet meeting, he was informed by a telegram from the American consul at Veracruz of the approach of the Ypiranga, believed to be bringing a cargo of arms for Huerta. At 2 P.M. he met with four House and Senate leaders and read them the resolution which he wished Congress to pass justifying the use of force to secure amends for “affronts and indignities” to the United States. He also told the Congressional leaders that he wished to intercept the German ship, but when he went up to the Capitol an hour later to ask for the resolution in person, he did not mention the Ypiranga. Congress was left to debate the use of force solely on the issue of an outworn ritual of apology due to the national honor of the United States, and there were many who blushed for the cause. Uneasily the debate began; it turned sour; Wilson anxiously returned for a cloakroom conference at 6 P.M.; by nightfall nothing had been settled. Washington went to bed on a lighted fuse.

  By now the ultimatum had lain unimplemented for over twenty-four hours. Legally Wilson did not need Congressional authorization but, still tortured by indecision, he did not act. He longed to pull the trigger against Huerta, but the flimsiness of his case, which even dollar diplomats, hardened to manipulating Latin American affairs for their own ends, might have hesitated to use, held him back. It was the German arms ship that precipitated what happened next.

  In the still hours before dawn of April 21 the shrill ring of the telephone pierced the sleep of the President. Struggling to come awake in the dark, he picked up the receiver and heard the voice of Secretary Bryan, who was calling in pajamas from his home in Calumet Place. Another voice joined in, that of Secretary of the Navy Daniels, who, previously roused from bed, was plugged in on a three-way hookup. Downstairs in the White House, the President’s secretary, Joseph Tumulty, also in pajamas, listened in on an extension.

  “Mr. President,” said Bryan, tuning the famous larynx to a solemnity suitable for midnight crisis, “I am sorry to inform you that I have just received a telegram from Veracruz reporting that the Ypiranga is due to dock at ten this morning.”

  “What? Oh, yes, yes. Go ahead, Mr. Bryan.”

  “The telegram is from our consul at Veracruz, William Canada. He wires, ‘Steamer Ypiranga, owned by Hamburg-Amerika line, will arrive tomorrow from Germany with 200 machine guns and 15,000,000 cartridges; will go to Pier 4 and start discharging at 10:30.’ Consul Canada also says that three trains, each coaled up and ready, are waiting on the pier to load the munitions and will leave as soon as loaded and that the Veracruz commander, General Maas, has stated ‘he will not fight but will leave with all soldiers and rolling stock tomorrow tearing up the track behind him.’ ”

  “Do you realize what this means, Mr. Bryan?” Distress and hesitation wrinkled the President’s voice. “Daniels, are you there, Daniels? What do you think?”

  “The munitions should not be permitted to reach Huerta,” Daniels answered. “I can wire Admiral Fletcher to prevent it and take the Customs House. I think that should be done.”

  A pause fell upon the listeners as each in his separate room, gripping the telephone that linked him with the others, felt the heaviness of the decision the President must make. Then the pause was broken. “Daniels,” came the President’s voice, “send this order to Admiral Fletcher: Take Veracruz at once!” This pre-dawn parley, since known to history as the Pajama Conference, launched the United States upon the invasion of a neighboring state.

  Over in the Navy Department a light went on, and minutes later the Secretary of the Navy’s message went tapping through the night air to Admiral Fletcher at Veracruz: SEIZE THE CUSTOMS HOUSE. DO NOT PERMIT WAR SUPPLIES TO BE DELIVERED TO HUERTA GOVERNMENT OR TO ANY OTHER PARTY.

  Next day Wilson, pacing the floor, waited for news along with Bryan, white-faced and fidgety, and Daniels, drained of all his bounce and cheer. Secretary of War Garrison and Robert Lansing, Counselor of the State Department, waited with them while up on Capitol Hill a bewildered Congress now found itself debating in anger and incredulity a resolution approving the President’s midnight action in virtually putting the United States at war over what appeared to the public to be “some medieval points of punctilio” in a petty quarrel about a salute.

  Already at 8:30 that morning Admiral Fletcher’s flagship, with ominous signals wigwagging from its deck, had blocked the path of the Ypiranga and sent its engines clanging into reverse. Three hours later American marines and bluejackets poured ashore at Veracruz and took possession of the Customs House, the railroad yards and rolling stock, the cable, telegraph, and post offices.

  Then occurred a regrettable mischance: the Mexicans resisted. How were they to know the running bluejackets with fixed bayonets had really come down to Mexico, in Wilson’s words, “to serve mankind”? Mexican cadets barricaded a stone fort and opened fire upon the invaders. Encouraged by this sign of defense, angry citizens rushed to shoot from upstairs windows. In reply the guns of the U.S.S. Prairie shelled the city. Blood spattered the walls, dead bodies fell in the streets.

  FOUR OF OUR MEN KILLED, 20 WOUNDED. FIRING ALL AROUND THE CONSULATE, wired Consul Canada at 4 P.M. to the men waiting in the White House. When all the casualties had been counted after the occupation of Veracruz was completed, 19 Americans and 126 Mexicans had been killed, 71 Americans and 95 Mexicans wounded.

  These irretrievable deaths stared Wilson in the face and left him shaken. Facing the press next day, he looked, one of the newsmen remembered, “preternaturally pale, almost parchmenty—the death of American sailors a
nd marines owing to an order of his seemed to affect him like an ailment.” On top of tragedy came humiliation. Even before the echo of the firing reached Washington, Germany lodged a protest at the State Department.

  His Excellency Count von Bernstorff, correct in his Homburg, with pearl-gray cutaway and gray pearl stick-pin, called in person upon the Secretary of State to protest the halting of the Ypiranga without prior declaration of blockade or state of war. Bowing him out, Mr. Bryan worriedly consulted his legal experts. Precedents hastily examined revealed the painful truth: the German Ambassador was right. Secretary Bryan, seeming almost to relish the opportunity for a public display of Christian humility, proceeded at once to the German Embassy to apologize in person. While exposing his country’s embarrassment he managed to spare his own by blaming the whole thing on Admiral Fletcher, who, he said, “through a misunderstanding exceeded his instructions.” Full tilt upon public confession—for Mr. Bryan tended to conduct diplomacy like a penitent at a revival meeting—he let it be known that “by direction of the President” he had offered an explanation and apology to the German Ambassador and that Admiral Fletcher had been instructed to call personally upon the captain of the Ypiranga and do likewise. With somewhat less relish, Secretary Daniels was forced to inform the bewildered admiral of this duty.

  Publicly the Germans announced that the munitions would be returned to Hamburg, but while American attention was focused on Veracruz they privately ordered the Ypiranga to slip down the coast to Puerto Mexico, where, after she was joined by the Bavaria carrying 1,800,000 rounds of ammunition and 8327 rolls of barbed wire, both ships quietly completed delivery of their cargoes to the Huerta forces. Whether it was to compel a salute from General Huerta or to prevent delivery of German arms to him that nineteen Americans had died, it was now difficult to avoid the conclusion that they had died in vain.

  Germany was entranced by the results of her experiment in Latin American meddling. “Mexico is a god-send to us,” privately wrote Count Bernstorff. The United States would soon annex Mexico, explained Der Tag, and thus arouse all Latin America to unite to throw off the Yankee yoke. Germany could then move in. Der Tag foresaw the United States sucked into a war in Mexico’s mountains and jungles, lasting five years at least. “The intervention of Japan is more than a possibility,” it affirmed and drew a happy picture of Japanese forces landing on the coast of Mexico and marching on California.

  Veracruz did, in fact, provoke the resentment Germany was hoping for. American travelers returning from South America reported the people seething with antagonism toward the United States. Unhappily Germany was prevented from taking advantage of it, owing to the consequences of the midsummer murder of an Austrian archduke at Sarajevo.

  The dauntless Kaiser, optimistic as ever, was not to be diverted by the unfortunate affair at Sarajevo from seizing the golden opportunity for German expansion opening at last in Latin America. Playing his usual personal hand, he dispatched an emissary to London to invite England to collaborate with Germany to block the evident design of the United States for the conquest of Mexico. “I am ready to give you the highest official assurance,” the emissary told an astonished Foreign Office, “that your country and my country would have no difficulty in arranging our respective spheres of influence in Mexico.” Considering that the hour was July 1914, the Kaiser’s proposal was an odd one and evoked only a British stare of hauteur.

  President Wilson knew nothing of this at the time, but he was unhappy enough already. Rather helplessly he told the country at the funeral of the Veracruz casualties, “We have gone down to Mexico to serve mankind, if we can find out a way. We do not want to fight the Mexicans. We want to serve the Mexicans if we can.” But in a personal letter to a friend he acknowledged, “I am longing for an exit.”

  Again he was given one, this time by the ABC powers, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, who offered to mediate. With equal relief Wilson and Huerta accepted, but for Huerta it came too late. Veracruz was a blow from which his regime never recovered, and before long Carranza had marched upon the capital and ousted him. Luckier than Madero, he got away to exile, and, as Díaz had done before him, he sailed to exile on a German ship. On July 17, Captain Kohler and the entire officer complement of the cruiser Dresden in dress uniform stood at attention on the station platform of Puerto Mexico to greet the departing dictator and escort him to their ship. Díaz died in exile, but, unlike Díaz, General Huerta would return—with Germany, still lured by Mexico, behind him.

  In the meantime Huerta went to Spain, arriving there on August 1, three days before the world exploded.

  Four

  The Third Partner—Japan

  ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER 1914, when the war was but a month old, an American in New York unexpectedly met on the street a man whom he had last seen, resplendent in medals, at a diplomatic dinner in Mexico City. The American was about to greet him when the man put his finger on his lips and with a silencing glance “disappeared around the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets.” Such stealth seemed bizarre on the part of a distinguished diplomat, for the American knew the man to be Germany’s Minister to Mexico, Admiral Paul von Hintze. His appearance on Wall Street was the beginning of a remarkable adventure upon which rested Germany’s hopes of detaching the imperial power of Japan from the Allies. Six months later von Hintze was Minister in China, having outwitted the secret services of three countries to reach there. He had been personally selected for the post by the Kaiser, and his mission was to persuade Japan to change sides.

  The Germans’ time table for quick victory in the European war had gone wrong when the defense of the Marne barred them a bare taxi ride from Paris; it was a dead letter by November, when the desperate defense of Ypres barred their way to the French Channel ports. After that all hope of the “decisive battle” preached by Clausewitz was lost, and the German war plan—to smash France fast before Russia could effectively open a second front—lay derelict in the death-saturated mud of Flanders. From then on the war on the Western Front became transfixed along a line of trenches from the Alps to the Channel, where first one side and then the other threw away fresh assemblies of men and guns in monstrous, useless assaults to break the deadlock.

  It was then, from imperative necessity to weaken the Allies, that America and Japan and Mexico became important in the German scheme. Germany had two goals in mind. One was to cut off America’s supply of war materials to the Allies by embroiling the United States in an all-absorbing war with Mexico or Japan, or preferably both. The other was to frighten Russia out of the war by inducing her recent enemy, Japan, to leave the Allies and join the German camp.

  Japan, having declared war on Germany on August 9, had won more for herself out of the war in a shorter belligerent time than any of the Allies. By November 7, 1914, she had snapped up Germany’s naval base and leased territory at Tsingtao and the German Pacific islands—Yap, Truk, and the other Marshalls and Carolines whose names were to become famous one war later. At that point her active belligerency stopped.

  Germany could not help thinking that Japan, whose rapacity she considered only natural, had chosen the wrong side. She seemed to belong with Germany in spirit. The Kaiser was still not sure whether he should combat Japan as the Yellow Peril or associate with her as the Prussia of the East, but in times like these expediency must decide. Expediency unhesitatingly said that, as an ally, Japan would not only contain Russia but deter the United States. Mexico would provide the occasion and the place, but how much more effective as a deterrent Mexico would be if she were joined by the organized power of America’s other natural enemy, Japan!

  It was no coincidence that these theories took shape in the mind of a diplomat familiar with Mexico, an astute and resolute envoy who was also an intimate of the Kaiser, a friend of Ludendorff, a former adjutant of the Czar, a high-ranking officer, and a future Foreign Minister whose fate was to be to arrange the conditions of the Kaiser’s abdication in the final months of collapse. In Mexico City the blue-eye
d, clean-shaven von Hintze was considered one of the more agreeable members of the diplomatic corps. Though an ardent pan-German and Junker into whose mind never entered any question of the divine right of German militarism, he tempered his normal arrogance with amiability, and he even, later, reasonably suggested that his countrymen might have locked up Miss Edith Cavell instead of shooting her. He was intelligent, cultivated, sociable, spoke English without an accent, and, evidently sharing every Prussian’s secret ambition to be taken for an English gentleman, dressed in impeccable English clothes except for the anomaly, noticed by an American diplomat’s wife, that he wore a large amethyst ring.

  Von Hintze’s earlier experience had included a brush with Americans on a famous occasion. In 1898, as a “capable, tactful young officer” attached to Admiral von Diederichs’ Pacific Squadron, he had been sent during a tense moment at Manila Bay to deliver a provocative message from his commander to Admiral Dewey. He was said to have reported back with such verisimilitude Dewey’s red-faced roar, “If your Admiral wants a fight he can have it now!” that Diederichs advised the Kaiser that perhaps the Philippines was not worth a war after all.

  Afterward von Hintze went as naval attaché to St. Petersburg, where he stayed seven years, part of the time as the Kaiser’s personally appointed adjutant to his imperial cousin Nicky. In 1911 he returned to become aide-de-camp to the Kaiser and in the following year was named Minister to Mexico. It was he who, after the Veracruz attack, proffered Germany’s help to Huerta if Huerta would in return agree to cut off Britain’s oil in case of war. During that crisis the natural association of Germany, Mexico, and Japan was taking visible shape. Huerta asked Japan to represent him at Washington and, though Japan declined, the press, both American and European, was full of talk that Japan would interfere on behalf of Mexico in the event of war between Mexico with the United States.