Copperas Cove Leader-Press (Copperas Cove, Tex.), Vol. 118, No. 31, Ed. 1 Friday, January 18, 2013 Page: 4 of 14
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CRIME STOPPERS
547-1111
“Help Us Put It Together”
Brits intercept
telegram and
U.S. goes
to war
In a presumably secure cable sent on
Jan. 16, 1917, the German foreign minister
let his man in Mexico in on the biggest
secret of the war, but little did he know the
British were reading his mail.
In the opening days of 1917, the third
year of the trench stalemate on the other
side of the Atlantic, the Kaiser’s High
Command made a daring decision. Gam-
bling the United States could not field a
combat-ready army within six months, the
German strategists came up with a cam-
paign of unrestricted submarine warfare.
The kickoff date for the all-out offen-
sive was Feb. 1, 1917, and with any luck at
all Great Britain would surrender by sum-
mer. But for the unlucky Germans that was
a bad bet.
Emboldened by the green light given
the U-boats, foreign minister Arthur Zim-
merman played his international trump
card. A super-secret communique to his
Mexico City envoy was supposed to be
relayed by merchant ship, but a last-minute
cancellation of the
cruise caused a
fateful change in
plans.
Using three
different routes,
including the U.S.
state department
cable obligingly
provided by Presi-
dent Woodrow
Wilson, Zimmer-
man sent the sinis-
ter instructions on
Jan. 16. The
coded dispatch
informed the Ger-
man ambassador
of the scheduled
On the off-chance Wilson lost his tem-
per, Zimmerman ordered his emissary to
“make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the
following basis: make war together, gener-
ous financial support and an understanding
on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the
lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and
Arizona.” Furthermore, to Mexican dicta-
tor Carranza the subtle suggestion should
be made that he invite the Japanese to the
party.
Zimmerman did not suspect that
months earlier British intelligence had
cracked the top-secret German code. The
Mexico message was routinely intercepted,
and in a matter of hours London knew
exactly what Berlin was up to.
A few days later, Wilson spoke from
the moral mountaintop in a speech to the
U.S. Senate. His naive call for “peace
without victory” so angered the British that
they decided to withhold for the time being
the text of the deciphered telegram.
On the afternoon of Jan. 31, hours
before the U-boats were unleashed, Ger-
many formally notified the American secre-
tary of state that open season had been
declared on high-seas shipping. This was
the last straw for most U.S. officials, but
Wilson took the ominous development in
stride.
At a tense meeting of the cabinet, the
president repeated his unswerving resolve
to keep America on the sidelines. Asked
his personal preference, the ex-professor
shocked everybody in attendance by
frankly admitting he did not care which
side won the war.
South of the border, however, the Ger-
mans’ timing was could not have been
worse. Wilson had issued orders on Jan. 25
for the punitive expedition pursuing Pancho
Villa to come home. Had American sol-
diers still been on Mexican soil when the
Zimmerman proposal was presented to Car-
ranza, he probably would have jumped at
the chance to get even with the gringos.
Realizing Wilson required proof of the
Huns’ hostile intentions, the British finally
handed the text of the Zimmerman cable to
the American ambassador in late February.
Careful to conceal their source, they
advised the diplomat that the original ver-
sion of the message could be found in the
files of his own government.
The whole incredible tale, minus the
embarrassing state department connection,
was cleared for publication. The sensation-
al story broke in the American press on
Mar. 1, and dumbfounded Texans devoured
the unbelievable details of the plot that tar-
geted the Lone Star State for a sneak attack
from Germany, Mexico and Japan.
Typical of the coverage were headlines
in the Houston Chronicle that blared,
“White House Confirms Teutonic Conspira-
cy. Germany’s World-Power Lust is
See HISTORY, Page 5A
Bartee Haile
Texas History
U-boat blitz.
Light reading
I love to get lost in a book. I love to
block out real life, and travel to another time
and place. Through books, I’ve experienced
everything from war to romance to space
travel. Well, not much space travel . . . I’m
not much of a science fiction girl. But the
war and romance stuff, back in the Renais-
sance era with those great dresses and the
hunky heroes and the drafty castles ... I love
that stuff. Yes, I’m a sappy romantic, and I’m
not ashamed.
I’ve recently started Jan Karon’s In the
Company of Others. I read in the evenings to
help me relax, and I do love me some Father
Tim. For those of you who haven’t jumped on
the Mitford bandwagon, Father Tim is an
Episcopal priest who thought he’d live out his
days as a bachelor, but falls in love and mar-
ries late in life.
I love the way he loves Cynthia. It’s a
sweet, enduring passion that causes him to
think she’s sexy in flannel, causes him to get
butterflies in his stomach when he sees her
smile and knows she’s happy. It’s the kind of
real, practical, every-
day love most women
dream of.
(Heavy sigh.)
I’m reading anoth-
er book in the morn-
ings. This book is more
adventuresome than
romantic, though it
does contain plenty of
romance. And the
adventures are more of
the raw, dark kind that
do happen in real life,
but that nobody likes
to talk about much.
Yes, that’s right.
I’m reading the Bible.
I wake up, start
the coffee, and get out
my Bible. Then I shuf-
fle back to my bed, crawl beneath my covers,
turn on the lamp, and yawn a couple more
times before I begin that day’s passage. Since
it’s a new year, I decided to start at the begin-
ning.
Genesis. Creation and naming the animals
and cute little Noah’s arks and all that. A little
light reading to start each day.
Not.
So far in my reading, I’ve encountered
murder, incest, rape, prostitution, drunken-
ness, theft, and more codependent, dysfunc-
tional families than I can name here. That’s all
in the first book of the Bible, and I’m not even
finished with it yet. Talk about a waker-upper.
Seriously. I couldn’t go back to sleep after
reading all that, even if I wanted to.
All those heinous sins were committed by
God’s own people. His chosen people. In spite
of the fact that they knew better.
With every new tragedy, every new story,
I’m learning about God’s grace. His mercy.
His compassion. And I’m reminded, time and
again, that nothing we do, nothing we experi-
ence takes God by surprise. He’s seen it all
See BRUMBAUGH, Page 5A
Renae
Brumbaugh
Coffee
Talk
Rich
Lowry
column
Take the Hostage
The budget crisis is over. Long
live the budget crisis.
Now that the fiscal cliff has
been resolved, we're on to the fight
over raising the debt ceiling. Presi-
dent Barack Obama wants no part of
it. Immediately after Congress
passed his tax increases to avoid the
cliff, he insisted that there is no way
he'll negotiate over the debt ceiling.
That would be so inappropriate.
Cue the hostage-taking analo-
gies, the talk of extremism, the
lamentations over a broken Washing-
ton. But why is the president out-
raged that someone would use the
leverage of an impending event that
would damage the economy to his
negotiating advantage? It's precisely
how he won on the cliff
No one called him a hostage
taker when he didn't immediately
accept the House Republican exten-
sion of all the Bush tax cuts, and
instead insisted on forcing a choice
between higher tax rates on the
wealthy or going off the cliff
He got his way. Not because
Republicans wanted to raise taxes.
But because taxes would go up for
everyone on Jan. 1, and very few
people (and no Republicans) wanted
that to happen. Obama used every
ounce of his leverage to raise taxes
on as many people as he could — and
succeeded. Congratulations.
Now that the leverage may work
the other way, Obama wants an end
to all this crazy talk of negotiating
things and compromising. "I will not
See LOWRY, Page 5A
Copperas Cove Leader-Press
(254) 547-4207 Fax 542-3299
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web site: www.coveleaderpress.com
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Photographer: Dennis Knowlton
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Distribution: Alex Perez
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Copperas Cove Leader-Press (Copperas Cove, Tex.), Vol. 118, No. 31, Ed. 1 Friday, January 18, 2013, newspaper, January 18, 2013; Copperas Cove, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth627509/m1/4/: accessed May 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .