763.72/2478
President Wilson to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: This is disappointing.82 House had cabled me a copy of what Gerard had sent him, and I was just about to send it to you.
I cannot help feeling that Gerard might have managed this better, so at least to give us a chance to act as intermediary in some way in an interchange between England and Germany that might have been the beginning of something.
The terms Zimmermann suggests are manifestly impossible of acceptance by England so far as they concern things which, like copper, enter into the manufacture of munitions of war. It looks as if we were again in a blind alley.
What would you think of sending the following to Gerard:
Please point out kindly and unofficially but very earnestly to the Foreign Office that the conditions now prevailing in the marine war zone are rapidly becoming intolerable to the whole world, that their rectification is in the interest of both parties to the present conflict, and that this Government, while it has nothing to propose as between the belligerents, but will confine itself to the protection of its own clear rights, will act with pleasure in conveying any proposals that either the one government or the other has to make for the correction of the present conditions fraught as they are with universal danger.
We can do no more than this; we should, perhaps, do no less.
Gerard has got part of his instructions wrong. We did not say that the new Ministry in England would be willing. We said only that we had reason to hope that they would be. I suppose it would be well to make this clear to him . . .
Faithfully Yours,
- See telegram No. 2289, May 25, 1915, from the Ambassador in Germany, Foreign Relations, 1915, supp., p. 415.↩