The Codebreakers: The True Story of the Secret Intelligence Team That Changed the Course of the First World War by James Wyllie, Michael McKinley

Wilson had not mentioned the
Lusitania
(nor would he in that speech), ‘the audience did not hesitate to read the application of his statement’.
    Count von Bernstorff, the German ambassador, had endured both a bomb threat at the German embassy in Washington, and the persistence of a group of US newspaper reporters, who chased him in a speeding taxi from his suite at the Ritz-Carlton to Penn Station. There the cornered von Bernstorff fended off their questions in surreal fashion, first by claiming that he wasn’t there at all, and then, in relief, agreeing to a reporter’s suggestion that he had to wait for instructions from his government.
    But what really mattered to the world was America’s response. In Berlin, American ambassador James Gerard fully expected his country to declare war on Germany, and prepared to depart for home. Instead, on 11 May, he found himself delivering the first American ‘
Lusitania
Note’ to the Germans. The Wilson government’s high-minded response did not declare war, but rather asserted that Germany should not expect the United States ‘to omit any word or any act necessary to the sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens’.
    Gerard had frequent conversations during that intense post-
Lusitania
period with Germany’s Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow and Under Secretary of State Arthur Zimmermann. On one heated occasion Zimmermann, pounding the table with his fist, told Gerard that the United States wouldn’t dare to retaliate because ‘we have five hundred thousand German reservists in America who will rise in arms against your government’. Gerard’s response was highly undiplomatic, but traditionally American in its use of mob violence: ‘I told him we had five hundred and one thousand lamp posts in America, and that is where the German reservists would find themselves if they tried any uprising.’
    Germany apologised to the United States for the loss of the
Lusitania
, but never accepted blame, arguing that it had destroyed the ship within the rules of warfare because it was carrying war goods. Even so, the German government wanted to keep the United States from joining the Allied cause and issued secret orders to its submarine captains to stop sinking passenger liners.
    The United States accepted the German government’s apology. America would not be going to war with Germany over the
Lusitania
, much to the dismay of the Allies, who now wondered just what sort of outrage it would take to bring her into the fight. And the Germans didn’t need their 500,000 reservists to rise up in America. Von Bernstorff and his masters in Berlin were exploring other, potentially more deadly, options.

Chapter 4
MILITARY MATTERS
    When a German machine-gun bullet struck Malcolm Hay in the head, he knew instantly what had happened: ‘the blow might have come from a sledge hammer, except that it seemed to carry with it an impression of speed’. In the few seconds before he lost consciousness, he noticed that his watch was spattered with blood. When he came round, he was ‘unable to move any part of my body except my left hand’.
    Hay, future head of the army’s codebreaking outfit MI1(b), had joined the Gordon Highlanders on the day war was declared, and arrived in France as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in August 1914. As he marched through the countryside towards the Belgian town of Mons, enjoying a late summer heatwave, there wasn’t ‘the slightest hint of war’. That would rapidly change: his unit was about to bear the full brunt of the massive German offensive designed to drive the BEF back where they came from and deliver a devastating right hook towards Paris. Hay noted that ‘the German superiority at that part of the line was probably about three to one in guns, and five or more to one in men’.
    Besieged from the flanks and the rear, Hay and his troops joined the general British retreat; suddenly the glorious weather