"You are also instructed to inform the president of Mexico of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain there will be an outbreak of war with the United States and suggest that the President of Mexico on his own initiative should communicate with Japan suggesting adherence at once to this plan; at the same time offer to mediate between Germany 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.
This document was decoded from the official dictionary cipher and laid in the hands of President Wilson almost immediately following the rupture of diplomatic relations. It was made public on February 28, when the public temper was at whitest heat. Mexico did not repudiate the note at once, and four days later despatched a denial of having received any such proposal as Zimmermann had suggested. Eckhart was forcing Carranza's hand with the lure of the projected Central American enterprise already outlined. (Eckhart had had Carranza so completely under his influence at one time that when the United States despatched to Mexico a friendly note warning her of the presence of German submarines in the Gulf, Mexico retorted--at Eckhart's literal dictation--that the United States might do well to ask the British Navy why it did not prevent German undersea craft from approaching the Americas.) The month of March fled by, and America went to war; since that date no official expression except one of praise for Mexico's attitude of amiable neutrality has issued from Washington.
Just as the proximity of Mexico to the United States had for a number of years past carried with it the possibility, almost the certainty, of differences between the two countries, rising out of the temperamental differences of their peoples, so for a longer period had Ireland and England suffered for their contiguity. It is a truism to remark that the Irishman cherishes his national grievances, but that characteristic accounts for a further phase of German intrigue on American soil. Hatred of England sent many thousands of Irish to the United States in the past fifty years. They found it a country to their liking, which England was not, and although they had become indissolubly attached to their adopted land, there were in America in 1914 (and there are in 1918) numerous Irish who had no dearer wish than that England come off second best in the great war. Allies after Germany's own heart they were, therefore. They had been cultivated long since: in 1909, when plans were being made for a centenary celebration in 1914 of the peace that had reigned between the United States and England, German-American and Irish-American interests began to raise a structure of their own, exploiting the prominence which certain Germans, such as Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz, had enjoyed in the construction of the nation. The programme of these interests included the erection of elaborate memorials over the graves of prominent German Americans, the dissemination of legends of German heroes in America, and more practically the frustrating of the projected Peace Centenary.