many 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.

"ZIMMERMAN."

The Administration was in possession of this document, and achieved a
dramatic coup in exposing its contents just as important war
legislation was pending in Congress. The immediate effect of the
revelation was that the Armed-Ship Bill passed the House of
Representatives by the overwhelming majority recorded in the previous
chapter. The Senate was no less astonished; but its attitude was one
of incredulity and produced a demand to the State Department vouching
for the document's authenticity and demanding other information.
Secretary Lansing assured it that the letter was _bona fide_, but
declined to say more.

The letter was transmitted to Von Eckhardt through Count von
Bernstorff, then German Ambassador at Washington, and now homeward
bound to Germany under a safe conduct obtained from his enemies by the
country against which he was plotting war. It came into the
President's hands a few days before it was published on March 1, 1917,
and provided a telling comment on Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg's
declaration that the United States had placed an interpretation on the
new submarine decree "never intended by Germany" and that Germany had
promoted and honored friendly relations with the United States "as an
heirloom from Frederick the Great." Its disclosure was viewed as a
sufficing answer to the German Chancellor's plaint that the United
States had "brusquely" broken off relations without giving "authentic"
reasons for its action.

The bearings of the proposal to Mexico were admirably stated by the
Associated Press as follows:

"The document supplies the missing link to many separate chains of
circumstances which, until now, have seemed to lead to no definite
point. It sheds new light upon the frequently reported but indefinable
movements of the Mexican Government to couple its situation with the
friction between the United States and Japan.

"It adds another chapter to the celebrated report of Jules Cambon,
French Ambassador in Berlin before the war, for Germany's world-wide
plans for stirring up strife on every continent where they might aid
her in the struggle for world domination which she dreamed was close
at hand.

"It adds a clima