“What about the United States?” I inquired cautiously, “Surely a more likely country to be mentioned than Japan in the context of Mexico?”
“Not quite in the proximity which we find here. If my instinct is right, this telegram is about the part to be played by others in respect of the United States. In that case, ‘ United States ’ may have a lower frequency than the protagonists. You will find 39695, here, and here, and here, occurring almost incidentally. That I deduce is more likely to be the United States. I shall be surprised if I am not right.”
We worked long into that cold January night, deaf to the sounds of the street below, indifferent to the supper which Mrs Hudson brought on a tray and which remained untasted.
“Yes, yes!” said Holmes impatiently to her kindly reproach. Presently the sitting-room air was clouded with the smoke of his pipe and the food still remained almost untouched.
I was little help, I fear. Yet I could not have torn myself away as I watched him working at the blocks of numbers on the telegram form. He had the previous cipher of the German diplomatic telegrams to hand and now established to his own satisfaction the five-number groups which represented the nations, like pieces on a chess-board.
As the hours passed, Zimmermann’s text began to appear in groups or clumps of letters and signs, like islands in a sea of numbers. Just after midnight, Holmes hit another vein of inspiration. Nouns were divided into groups of four or five letters. Other words varied a little to identify each occurrence. He made out that 6926, 6929 and 6992, were varying forms of “and,” determined by which letter began the next word. This in turn gave him the first letters of “ Japan,” “understanding” and “suggestion.” With fewer than half the words deciphered, the purpose of the telegram was plain. He recognised 5903 as “krieg” or “war.” A repetition of 98092 from an earlier telegram gave him “U-boat.” This left him with an incomplete phrase, “ersten 13605 un-14963 U-boot krieg.”
“What is the date, Watson?”
I was quite unprepared for this and had to think for a moment.
“The twenty-third of January. That is to say, the small hours of the twenty-fourth.”
“Admirable! Then the crucial date in the telegram must be ‘ersten Februar’-the first of February! The first of the next month in the immediate future. One does not use telegrams for dates that are far off, there is no urgency and the decision may not yet have been taken. Therefore we have, The first of February un-14963 U-boat war.’ There is already a U-boat war being fought but what is to come is in some way different. What can that be but ‘The first of February un-restricted U-boat war.’ It is an instruction to Bernstorff in Washington and an order to Eckhardt in Mexico City, to the effect that Germany will sink on sight, in a week’s time, neutral shipping entering European waters.”
“ Wilson cannot hold back from war, if that is the case!”
“I fear he may. The decision lies with Tirpitz and his master. If the Germans use the threat sparingly, Wilson will hesitate to commit his country to all-out war. Who would not? The loss of a few ships is nothing compared to a million men slaughtered on the battlefield and the nation’s prosperity in ruins. In any case, the likely outcome is that neutral vessels will keep well away from our shores, our own merchant fleet will be destroyed by Germany ’s torpedoes, and our goose will be cooked. That is the plan in Berlin. They want to preserve peace with America, if they can. If not, they hope to trap her in a war on her own continent.”
By three o’clock in the morning his pessimism seemed confirmed. We now had a translation of the text of the earlier passage: “Zimmermann to Bernstorff. Strictly Secret. Decipher this yourself. We intend to begin unrestricted U-boat warfare from 1 February. We will attempt to keep the United States BLANK. If this should not be BLANK, we offer Mexico…”
“The first BLANK is ‘neutral’” I said, “the second is ‘possible.’”
The rest of that night was spent in teasing out from the sets of numbers just what it was that Mexico might be offered in exchange for a German alliance. We made out “united in war, united in peace.” Then we returned to “ Texas, New Mexico, Arizona ” and the single word “zuruck”-“back.” Preposterous though it might seem, President Carranza was being offered the return of Mexico ’s lost territories in return for loyalty to the Kaiser.
This reading was confirmed when Holmes deciphered the two occurrences of 22464 as “President,” referring to President Carranza of Mexico, who was to be both a German ally and mediator in the alliance. He must induce 52262- Japan -to join the pact. England, which now appeared for the first time, would be “compelled” to make peace in a few months by a massive U-boat assault now being prepared. This would be sustained by supplies and fuel from Mexican ports. So long as the United States had only its small peacetime army, it could be invaded along the Mississippi valley by a Mexican army with the support of German “legionaries” and Japanese troops, conveniently cutting off those territories which were now to be returned to President Carranza. It was a complete confirmation of the tall story I had heard in the Army and Navy Club several years before!
I burst out laughing at the apparent absurdity of the suggestion. Holmes remained solemn.
“You cannot take it seriously,” I said, “the notion of the Japanese occupying the Mississippi Valley!”
“What I take seriously, Watson, is that America is strong at sea but weaker on land, as England has been. Such have been both our historic priorities. I take seriously the prospect of a small American peacetime army fighting valiantly, suffering reverses at first, but eventually being victorious. Pending that eventuality, which may be months or years away, I also take seriously the probable triumph of the U-boat campaign, while the Tampico oil wells supply German submarine bases in Mexico. I take seriously the choking of our supply lines by U-boat fleets, stalemate on the Western Front, the Royal Navy starved of fuel oil, immobilised, and a peace treaty leaving Germany with all her European conquests.”
“What a peace!” I said, as if to myself.
“ Belgium would be her puppet state, giving her a seaboard opposite our own shores. France would lose all that she lost in the war of 1871 and more besides. Morocco would be a German colony, opposite Gibraltar. Remember the German gunboat Panther’s seizure of Agadir in the crisis of 1911.”
It was in a sober mood that we abandoned the half-finished puzzle and went to our rooms as the first sounds of the milk-carts and the bread-vans disturbed the early winter morning of the street. In a few hours more we should have enough of the German text before us to compose a report for Sir Reginald Hall.
The contents of the Zimmermann Telegram were released to the world in instalments. At first it seemed that we need not have bothered to decode the message, for Count Bernstorff called at the State Department on the afternoon of 31 January and gave notice to Secretary Lansing that Germany would commence unrestricted sinking on the following day. Bernstorff was handed his passport and ordered to leave for home. Yet Wilson was still the man of peace. “I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do. Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.”
There were to be overt acts in plenty but Holmes had not been wasting his time. In the privacy of his room at the Foreign Office, Arthur Balfour, presented a copy of the infamous telegram to the American Ambassador, Dr Page. Woodrow Wilson, who had striven so long for peace and had hoped that even the U-boat campaign might not mean general war, was aghast at Zimmermann’s audacity. In the cause of peace, the President had put at the disposal of Zimmermann the diplomatic cipher channel of the United States, so that America ’s peace proposals and Germany ’s responses might be confidentially exchanged. The Foreign Office in Berlin had even been allowed to use the channel for coded telegrams to its own embassy in Washington. How this facility had been abused as a means of preparing for war was now plain to see.