From: OKM

Date: 9 Dec

A dispatch from our Operatives in America:
The President of the United States of America addressed the political controlled branch of its government; Congress; with the following statements:
(Much of the transmission was grabbled, but the heart of this speech was received intact)
"… hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium … have been sunk with … reckless lack of compassion or of principle.
I … believe …
…the German Government has swept aside … all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world.
I am … now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is…
… it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence.
… Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping … merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers …, to endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention.
They must be dealt with upon sight …
There is one choice … : we will … choose the path of …
… nothing less than war …; … formally accept the status of belligerent …; and that it take immediate steps … to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and … war.
… It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany …,
It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the Nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects …
It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States …
While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objectives are. …
We have … quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them … . It was … upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was … with their previous knowledge or approval.
… we fight with… rancour and with… selfish object, seeking … for ourselves … what we shall wish to share …, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion … and … fair play we profess to be fighting for.
… It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents … because we act with… animus, … in enmity towards a people … with the desire to bring … injury or disadvantage upon them, …
… dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression …
… To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have …

As Chancellor Theobald Bethmann-Hollweg stated concerning the prospect of war with America:
"The directors of the American Nation have been convened by President Wilson for an extraordinary session of Congress in order to decide the question of war or peace between the American and German Nations.
Germany never had the slightest intention of attacking the United States of America, and does not have such intention now. It never desired war against the United States of America and does not desire it today.
How did these things develop? More than once we told the United States that we made unrestricted use of the submarine weapon, expecting that England could be made to observe, in her policy of blockade, the laws of humanity and of international agreements
This blockade policy, this I expressly recall, has been called illegal and indefensible by President Wilson and Secretary of State Lansing.
Our expectations, which we maintained during eight months, have been disappointed completely. England not only did not give up her illegal and indefensible policy of blockade, but uninterruptedly intensified it.
England, together with her allies, arrogantly rejected the peace offers made by us and our allies and proclaimed her war aims, which aim at our annihilation and that of our allies.
Then we took unrestricted submarine warfare into our hands; then we had to for our defence.
If the American Nation considers this a cause for which to declare war against the German Nation with which it has lived in peace for more than 100 years, if this action warrants an increase of bloodshed, we shall not have to bear the responsibility for it.
The German Nation, which feels neither hatred nor hostility, against the United States of America, shall also bear and overcome this."

If the America wants war, then let the first shot be theirs. After which America will no longer have a Navy, for we shall send it to the bottom of the ocean.