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 a...
Burnham and Root became rich men. Not Pullman rich, not rich enough to be counted among the first rank of society alongside Potter Palmer and Philip Armour, or to have their wives’ gowns described in...
At Randolph-Macon, Dodd promptly got himself into hot water. In 1902 he published an article in the Nation in which he attacked a successful campaign by the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans to have...
As before, Dodd believed Hitler was perfectly sincere about wanting peace. Now, however, the ambassador had realized, as had Messersmith before him, that Hitler’s real purpose was to buy time to allow...
And just before the heat wave, a rising young British writer had published a scalding essay on Chicago. Having seen it, Rudyard Kipling wrote, I desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savage...
America, secure in its fortress of neutrality, watched the war at a remove and found it all unfathomable. Undersecretary of State Robert Lansing, number two man in the State Department, tried to put t...
A single German submarine, Unterseeboot-9—U-9, for short—commanded by Kptlt. Otto Weddigen, had sunk all three ships, killing 1,459 British sailors, many of them young men in their teens.
A gyroscope kept the torpedo on course, adjusting for vertical and horizontal deflection. The track lingered on the surface like a long pale scar. In maritime vernacular, this trail of fading disturba...
Britain had more than twice as many submarines as Germany but used them mainly for coastal defense, not to stop merchant ships.)
The club had provided for music was a lone pianist who had no idea what kind of piece might accompany such an exotic dance. Bloom thought a moment, hummed a tune, then plinked it out on the keyboard o...
She suppressed a revolt led by the board’s executive secretary that had caused open warfare between factions of elegantly coiffed and dressed women.
Most sailors still held the belief that there was no point in knowing how to swim, since it would only prolong your suffering. Turner
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,...
Fair. Washington laid claim to the honor on grounds it was the center of government, New York because it was the center of everything. No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink...
William Stead recognized the power of the fair immediately. The vision of the White City and its profound contrast to the Black City drove him to write If Christ Came to Chicago, a book often credited...
Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it in riotous livi...
What I have now at your generous hands is infinitely precious to me. It would kill me to part with it,—I could not and I hope you could not. And I will be patient, patient without end, to see what, if...
What Edith did not yet appreciate was that Wilson was now a man in love, and as White House usher Ike Hoover observed, Wilson was no mean man in love-making when once the germ has found its resting pl...
Undersecretary of State Robert Lansing, number two man in the State Department, tried to put this phenomenon into words in a private memorandum. It is difficult, if not impossible, for us here in the...
There existed at this time a widespread perception that Hitler's government could not possible endure. Germany's military power was limited... And Hitler himself had begun to seem like a more temperat...