45 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 45 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.

Today’s book is For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush by Christopher Andrew. The excerpt is from the Woodrow Wilson administration regarding the Zimmerman Telegram.

Wilson’s address to a joint session of Congress on April 2, 1917, calling for a declaration of war on Germany, was one of the great speeches of American political history. It is best remembered for Wilson’s vision of a postwar world “made safe for democracy” with peace “planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.” Americans, said the president, remained “the sincere friends of the German people…however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts.” They had been brought into the conflict by “Germany’s irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and is running amok.” Among the evidence of “running amok” that Wilson cited were German intelligence operations:

One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friends is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.