on the basis of his speech, it would be able to keep all its conquests, using the ones it didn't want as bargaining chips in a final peace settlement… - Arthur Herman

The term used to describe them was rednecks, a Scots border term meaning Presbyterians. Another was cracker, from the Scots word craik for "talk," meaning a loud talker or braggart. Both words became permanent parts of the American language, and a permanent part of the identity of the Deep South the Ulster Scots created.

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.

For Lenin, “self-determination” was a clarion call not for democracy and freedom but for revolt and bloodshed that would rock the capitalist imperialist order down to its foundations.