The Administration was in possession of this document, and achieved a dramatic coup in exposing its contents just as important war legislation was pending in Congress. The immediate effect of the revelation was that the Armed-Ship Bill passed the House of Representatives by the overwhelming majority recorded in the previous chapter. The Senate was no less astonished; but its attitude was one of incredulity and produced a demand to the State Department vouching for the document's authenticity and demanding other information. Secretary Lansing assured it that the letter was _bona fide_, but declined to say more. The letter was transmitted to Von Eckhardt through Count von Bernstorff, then German Ambassador at Washington, and now homeward bound to Germany under a safe conduct obtained from his enemies by the country against which he was plotting war. It came into the President's hands a few days before it was published on March 1, 1917, and provided a telling comment on Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg's declaration that the United States had placed an interpretation on the new submarine decree "never intended by Germany" and that Germany had promoted and honored friendly relations with the United States "as an heirloom from Frederick the Great." Its disclosure was viewed as a sufficing answer to the German Chancellor's plaint that the United States had "brusquely" broken off relations without giving "authentic" reasons for its action. The bearings of the proposal to Mexico were admirably stated by the Associated Press as follows: "The document supplies the missing link to many separate chains of circumstances which, until now, have seemed to lead to no definite point. It sheds new light upon the frequently reported but indefinable movements of the Mexican Government to couple its situation with the friction between the United States and Japan. "It adds another chapter to the celebrated report of Jules Cambon, French Ambassador in Berlin before the war, for Germany's world-wide plans for stirring up strife on every continent where they might aid her in the struggle for world domination which she dreamed was close at hand. "It adds a climax to the operations of Count von Bernstorff and the German Embassy in this country, which have been colored with passport frauds, charges of dynamite plots, and intrigue, the full extent of which never has been published. "It gives new credence to persistent reports of submarine bases on Mexican territory in the Gulf of Mexico. It takes cognizance of a fact long recognized by American army chiefs, that if Japan ever undertook to invade the United States it probably would be through Mexico, over the border and into the Mississippi Valley to split the country in two.