The 200-word telegram that pulled America into World War I

In January 1917, the United States had spent nearly three years watching Europe tear itself apart and most Americans were fine with that. President Woodrow Wilson had just won reelection on the quiet promise that he had kept the country out of the war. The public largely backed him. Crossing the Atlantic to die in someone else's trenches was not something ordinary Americans were eager to sign up for. German-American and Irish-American communities, neither group particularly warm toward Britain,