Dead Wake (45 page)

Hall realized the time for action had come—that he had to get the telegram into American hands but at the same time protect the secret of Room 40. Through a bit of skulduggery, Hall managed to acquire a copy of the telegram as it had been received in Mexico, from an employee of the Mexican telegraph office, thereby allowing Britain to claim that it had obtained the telegram using conventional espionage techniques. On February 24, 1917, Britain’s foreign secretary formally presented a fully translated copy of the telegram to U.S. ambassador Page.

W
ILSON WANTED
to release the text immediately, but Secretary Lansing counseled against it, urging that they first confirm beyond doubt that the message was real. Wilson agreed to wait.

That same day, the news broke that a Cunard passenger liner, the
Laconia
, had been sunk off the coast of Ireland, after being struck by two torpedoes. Among the dead were a mother and daughter from Chicago. Edith Galt Wilson had known them both.

W
ILSON AND
L
ANSING
resolved to leak the telegram to the Associated Press, and on the morning of March 1, 1917, America’s newspapers made it front-page news. Skeptics immediately proclaimed the telegram to be a forgery concocted by the British, just as Lansing and Captain Hall had feared would happen. Lansing expected Zimmermann to deny the message, thereby forcing the United States either to disclose the source or to stand mute and insist that the nation trust the president.

But Zimmermann surprised him. On Friday, March 2, during
a press conference, Zimmermann himself confirmed that he had sent the telegram. “
By admitting the truth,” Lansing wrote, “he blundered in a most astounding manner for a man engaged in international intrigue. Of course the message itself was a stupid piece of business, but admitting it was far worse.”

T
HE REVELATION
that Germany hoped to enlist Mexico in an alliance, with the promise of U.S. territory as a reward, was galvanizing by itself, but it was followed on Sunday, March 18, by news that German submarines had sunk three more American ships, without warning. (To add to the sense of global cataclysm, a popular rebellion sweeping Russia—the so-called February Revolution—had caused the abdication on March 15 of Tsar Nicholas and filled the next day’s papers with news of violence in the streets of Russia’s then capital, Petrograd.) A tectonic shift occurred in the nation’s mood. The press now called for war. As historian Barbara Tuchman put it: “
All these papers had been ardently neutral until Zimmermann shot an arrow in the air and brought down neutrality like a dead duck.”

Secretary Lansing was elated. “
The American people are at last ready to make war on Germany, thank God,” he wrote in a personal memorandum, in which he revealed a certain bloodlust. “It may take two or three years,” Lansing wrote. “It may even take five years. It may cost a million Americans; it may cost five million. However long it may take, however many men it costs we must go through with it. I hope and believe that the President will see it in this light.”

Wilson gathered his cabinet on March 20, 1917, and asked each member to state his views. One by one each weighed in. All said the time for war had come; most agreed that in effect a state of war already existed between America and Germany. “
I must have spoken with vehemence,” Lansing wrote, “because the President asked me to lower my voice so that no one in the corridor could hear.”

Once all had spoken, Wilson thanked them but gave no hint as to what course he would take.

The next day, he sent a request to Congress to convene a special session on April 2. He prepared his speech, again typing on his Hammond portable. Ike Hoover, the White House usher, told another member of the staff that judging by Wilson’s mood, “
Germany is going to get Hell in the address to Congress. I never knew him to be more peevish. He’s out of sorts, doesn’t feel well, and has a headache.”

To prevent leaks, Wilson asked Hoover to bring the speech to the printing office in person, on the morning of April 2. That same day, news arrived that a German submarine had sunk yet another American ship, the
Aztec
, killing twenty-eight U.S. citizens. Wilson hoped to speak that afternoon, but various congressional processes intervened, and he was not called until the evening. He left the White House at 8:20
P
.
M
.; Edith had set off for the Capitol ten minutes earlier.

A spring rain fell, soft and fragrant; the streets gleamed from the ornate lamps along Pennsylvania Avenue. The dome of the Capitol was lit for the first time in the building’s history. Wilson’s Treasury secretary and son-in-law, William McAdoo, would later recall how the illuminated dome “
stood in solemn splendor against the dark wet sky.” Despite the rain, hundreds of men and women lined the avenue. They removed their hats and watched with somber expressions as the president passed slowly in his car, surrounded by soldiers on horseback, as clear a sign as any of what was to come. Hooves beat steadily against the street and gave the procession the air of a state funeral.

Wilson arrived at the Capitol at 8:30, to find it heavily guarded by additional cavalry, the Secret Service, post office inspectors, and city police. Three minutes later, the Speaker announced, “The President of the United States.” The vast chamber exploded with cheers and applause. Small American flags fluttered everywhere, like birds’ wings. The tumult continued for two minutes, before settling to allow Wilson to begin.

He spoke in the direct and cool manner that had become familiar to the nation and that listeners often described as professorial. His voice betrayed no hint of what he was now prepared to ask of
Congress. At first he kept his eyes on his text, but as he progressed he now and then looked up to underscore a point.

He described Germany’s behavior as constituting “
in effect nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States.” He outlined Germany’s past efforts at espionage and alluded to the Zimmermann telegram, and he cast America’s coming fight in lofty terms. “The world,” he said, “must be made safe for democracy.”

At this there rose the sound of one man’s applause, slow and loud. Sen. John Sharp Williams, a Mississippi Democrat, brought his hands together “
gravely, emphatically,” according to a reporter for the
New York Times
. In the next moment, the idea that this was the centerpiece of Wilson’s speech, and that it encapsulated all that America might hope to achieve, suddenly dawned on the rest of the senators and representatives, and a great roar filled the room.

Wilson’s remarks gained force and momentum. Warning of “many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead,” he declared that America’s fight was a fight on behalf of all nations.

“To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”

Now came pandemonium. Everyone rose at once. Flags waved. Men cheered, whistled, shouted, cried. Wilson had spoken for thirty-six minutes; he never mentioned the
Lusitania
by name. He quickly walked from the chamber.

Four days passed before both houses of Congress approved a resolution for war. During this period, as if deliberately seeking to ensure that no American had last-minute doubts, U-boats sank two American merchant ships, killing at least eleven U.S. citizens. Congress took so long not because there was any question whether the resolution would pass but because every senator and representative understood this to be a moment of great significance and
wanted to have his remarks locked forever in the embrace of history. Wilson signed the resolution at 1:18
P
.
M
. on April 6, 1917.

To Winston Churchill, it was long overdue. In his memoir-like history
The World Crisis, 1916–1918
, he said of Wilson, “
What he did in April, 1917, could have been done in May, 1915. And if done then what abridgment of the slaughter; what sparing of the agony; what ruin, what catastrophes would have been prevented; in how many million homes would an empty chair be occupied today; how different would be the shattered world in which victors and vanquished alike are condemned to live!”

As it happened, America joined the war just in time. Germany’s new campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare had succeeded to an alarming degree, although this had been kept secret by British officials. An American admiral, William S. Sims, learned the truth when he traveled to England to meet with British naval leaders to plan America’s participation in the war at sea. What Sims discovered shocked him. German U-boats were sinking ships at such a high rate that Admiralty officials secretly predicted Britain would be forced to capitulate by November 1, 1917. During the worst month, April, any ship leaving Britain had a one-in-four chance of being sunk.
In Queenstown, U.S. consul Frost saw striking corroboration of the new campaign’s effect: in a single twenty-four-hour period, the crews of six torpedoed ships came ashore. Admiral Sims reported to Washington, “
Briefly stated, I consider that at the present moment we are losing the war.”

Just ten days later, the U.S. Navy dispatched a squadron of destroyers. They set off from Boston on April 24. Not many of them. Just six. But the significance of their departure was lost on no one.

O
N THE MORNING
of May 4, 1917, anyone standing atop the Old Head of Kinsale would have seen an extraordinary sight. First there appeared six plumes of dark smoke, far off on the horizon. The day was unusually clear, the sea a deep blue, the hills emerald, very much like a certain day two years earlier. The ships became steadily more distinct. Wasplike with their long slender hulls, these
were ships not seen in these waters before. They approached in a line, each flying a large American flag. To the hundreds of onlookers by now gathered on shore, many also carrying American flags, it would be a sight they would never forget and into which they read great meaning. These were the descendants of the colonials returning now at Britain’s hour of need, the moment captured in an immediately famous painting by Bernard Gribble,
The Return of the Mayflower
. American flags hung from homes and public buildings. A British destroyer, the
Mary Rose
, sailed out to meet the inbound warships, and signaled, “
Welcome to the American colors.” To which the American commander answered, “Thank you, I am glad of your company.”

On May 8, the destroyers began their first patrols, just a day beyond the two-year anniversary of the sinking of the
Lusitania
.

EPILOGUE

PERSONAL EFFECTS

O
NE HOT DAY IN
J
ULY
1916,
A HARBOR PILOT WALKED
into the ship-news office in Battery Park in Manhattan and invited a group of reporters to accompany him on a brief voyage, by tugboat, up the Hudson River to Yonkers, north of Manhattan, where he was to “fetch out” a ship, that is, guide it downriver to the wider and safer waters of New York Harbor. Ordinarily this was not a voyage the reporters would be inclined to make, but the day was stifling and the pilot said the fresh air would do them all good. The reporters, among them the
Evening Mail
’s Jack Lawrence, also brought along a good deal of alcohol, or, as Lawrence put it, “liquid sustenance.” As their tugboat approached the Yonkers wharf, the reporters saw that the ship was an old Cunard ocean liner, the
Ultonia
, docked there to pick up a load of horses for the war. It was a small ship, with one funnel. “
She looked so smeared and dirty and utterly woebegone that we hardly recognized her,” Lawrence wrote. The ship’s black hull had been painted gray, in haphazard fashion. “Much of this had chipped off, giving her a peculiar, spotted appearance.”

The day was languid, the river calm, and yet the ship moved with a peculiar side-to-side motion. Lawrence had never seen such a thing and found it “almost uncanny.” This rolling, the pilot explained, was caused by the hundreds of horses within the ship. Sensing movement, all the horses roped to one side of the hull
would suddenly rear backward in alarm, causing a slight roll. This in turn would startle the horses anew and cause those on the opposite side to step back. The side-to-side roll became more pronounced with each cycle, to the point where the ship looked as if it were being buffeted by a heavy sea. This, the pilot explained, was called a “
horse storm,” and under certain conditions it could bang a ship against its wharf and damage deck rails and boats.

As the tugboat pulled up alongside the
Ultonia
, the ship’s cargo doors swung open to admit the pilot. The sun blazed. Inside the darkened hold stood one man, shaded by the overhead door. He looked down at the pilot and reporters. He did not smile. Lawrence recognized him at once: Capt. William Thomas Turner. “
His old blue uniform was soiled and wrinkled,” Lawrence wrote, but “his cap, bearing the Cunard Line insignia, was still at the familiar jaunty angle. The figure of the man was still erect and commanding.”

The pilot climbed into the ship.

“Glad to see you aboard, sir,” Turner told him. “We’ll get under way immediately. These horses are raising hell.”

Turner had been given command of the ship in November 1915, after its regular captain had fallen ill during a stop in France. He had been the only captain available to replace him. Just before Turner left Liverpool to take over command, Cunard’s chairman Alfred Booth asked him into his office. Booth began to apologize about assigning Turner to such a modest vessel, but the captain stopped him. “
I told him there were no regrets on my part,” Turner said. “I would go to sea on a barge if necessary to get afloat again, as I was tired of being idle and on shore while everyone else was away at sea.”