North Texas Star (Mineral Wells, Tex.), February 2009 Page: 5 of 40
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February 2009 • NORTH TEXAS STAR STORYTELLER & RAMBLER * Page 5
BOOMTOWN!
The city of Ranger was on the brink of
disaster when a handful of its citizens
resorted to desperate measures, and
they brought in a gusher that
restored the world's faith in
Texas as the energy capital of
America and was instrumental
in winning the Great War.
11 "X anger was a tired and dusty town in the sum
■ ^ mer of 1917. The whole region was choking
JL X. from drought. Folks who were affluent
enough to own an automobile had taken to draining
their radiators to prevent their more desperate neigh-
bors from stealing the water from them.
While Ranger was desperate for water, the rest of
the nation was just as desperate for a darker liquid -
oil.
The demand for oil had dramatically increased as
President Woodrow Wilson's plan to lead the
United States in sitting out the war that
ravaged most of Europe suddenly lost
its luster in January of that
same year after Germany
resumed unrestricted
submarine warfare.
The straw that broke
the proverbial camel's
back came in Room 40,
Britain's secret Royal
Navy's Cryptanalysis
think tank. The group
managed to decipher the
German diplomatic code / ® ,
and interpret an inter-
cepted telegram sent from Berlin to Mexico, according to histori-
an Patrick Beesly in his book, "Room 40: British Naval
Intelligence, 1914 -1918." (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich).
The now-famous dispatch, known as the
"Zimmermann Telegram," was penned by Foreign
Secretary of the German Empire Arthur
Zimmermann to the German ambassador in the
United States of America, Johann von Bernstorff.
Bernstorff, at Zimmermann’s insistence, for-
warded the telegram on to the German
ambassador to Mexico, Heinrich von
Eckardt.
The telegram was an order to
Ambassador Eckardt that in the event the
United States began preparing to enter the
war, Eckardt would approach the Mexican
government with an offer of military
alliance. Germany offered to help Mexico
take back much of the area it lost in the
course of the Mexican-American War, includ-
ing Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Eckardt
would also persuade Mexico to assist Germany in forg-
ing an alliance with Japan.
In an article by Ben Fenton, The London Daily
Telegraph said the "Telegram that brought U.S. into
Great War is found." The Telegraph suggested that if
the U.S. had to fight Mexico it
would be hard-pressed to
join its Allies in the fight
in Europe.
The telegram was
leaked to the American
press. Americans who
had once prayed for
peace were now
incensed. It gave
England the leverage it
needed to drag the U.S.
See page 6
By Marsha Browi/u tJt
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May, David. North Texas Star (Mineral Wells, Tex.), February 2009, newspaper, February 1, 2009; Mineral Wells, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1099715/m1/5/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting East Parker County Genealogy and Historical Society.