Big Wonderful Thing by Stephen Harrigan

Author:Stephen Harrigan [Harrigan, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 1956-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

35

WAR AT HOME AND ABROAD

BUT FIRST THERE WAS WORLD WAR I. “TO THE AVERAGE American,” the Dallas-based newspaper Farm and Ranch observed in August 1914, a few days after Germany invaded Belgium, causing Britain to declare war, “the war in Europe is unintelligible. Who knows what they are fighting about and what ends are hoped of achievement.” But the faraway conflict kept creeping closer to the United States. A hundred twenty-eight American lives were lost when a German U-boat sank the Lusitania, a British passenger liner that was also transporting munitions to England, in 1915. The next year, the German government declared unrestricted submarine warfare, a high-stakes calculation meant to prevent American shipments from reaching British forces before they could be defeated. That led to the United States breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany. Edward House was with his friend Woodrow Wilson in Washington a few days before the decision was made. “The President was sad and depressed,” according to House, “and I did not succeed at any time during the day in lifting him into a better frame of mind.”

Pershing’s troops had just returned from Mexico, and relations between the United States and the Carranza government were still sore, when American diplomats got wind of a coded message from the German Foreign Office to the Mexican government that had been intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. The so-called Zimmerman Telegram was almost as explicit and alarming to Texans as the Plan of San Diego had been. In the event of the United States not remaining neutral in the war, the Germans stated, “We make Mexico a proposal or alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, general financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.”

Carranza didn’t act on the offer. The dream of a deeply riven Mexico reconquering Texas, fighting the United States in another all-out war, was impractical. But there were still Texans alive whose grandfathers had been killed at the Alamo and at Goliad, or who had charged the Mexican Army with Sam Houston at San Jacinto, or who had fought off the forces of Vásquez and Woll when they tried to retake Texas in 1842. Americans in general were outraged at Germany aiming their bellows at the smoldering fire of U.S.-Mexico relations, but for Texans the stakes were personal.

One descendant of the Texas revolutionary aristocracy, however, was cautious about the prospect of war with Germany. Thanks to the endorsement of House, Albert Sidney Burleson was Wilson’s postmaster general, one of three Texans in the president’s cabinet. His grandfather was Edward Burleson, who had replaced Stephen Austin as the Texian commander during the siege of San Antonio. Edward Burleson had fought at San Jacinto, had led Mirabeau Lamar’s army against Chief Bowles and against the Comanches at Plum Creek, had served as vice president of the Republic of Texas and as a spy in the Mexican-American War. His son Edward Jr.

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