the Secret Service had unearthed a covert industrial spy network operating at the behest of a German commercial attaché - Arthur Herman

The telegram offered the promise that if Mexico allied itself with Germany, then Germany would help Mexico "regain by conquest her lost territory in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico." It went even further, suggesting that Germany and Mexico also reach out to Japan, and encourage that country's defection from the Allied camp by "mediating a peace," while offering to let the Japanese join in the spoils taken from the breakup of America's presence along the Pacific.

The U.S. president's consent to the Versailles Treaty did more to damage his reputation among his fellow liberals than anything else he did that crucial year. It also sowed the seeds for a bitterness among Germans that would ripen into the political movement that led to Adolf Hitler and World War II.

We have trodden underfoot the principles of Democracy for the sake of the loftier principles of Social Revolution," Trotsky said. "We are against oppression, but we will not yield our power without a ruthless struggle.