We entered the war because we wanted to enter the war. Wilson played at being a pacifist but once he entered the war he immediately used it as an excuse to clamp down on dissidents, nationalize the economy and jail his opponents under sedition laws. Everyone at the state department knew that the Zimmerman Telegram represented a pipe dream of a particular German politician, not official German policy. We were shipping weapons to the British on the Lusitania, and by our own laws that made us belligerents in the war. Not only that, but we continued shipping weapons to the British after the Germans pledged to stop unrestricted submarine warfare.