USS Arkansas

A picture post card taken April 1914 of the USS Arkansas was published in February 17, 2011 Arkansas Democrat Gazette. The caption read, "With tensions mounting between the United States and Mexico, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the U.S. Navy to prevent the landing of a shipment of guns at Veracruz. The state's namesake battleship took part in the landings at the Mexican port city. Sailors participated in the bloody street fighting that eventually secured the city. Two of its crew members died of wounds received in the assault. The Arkansas remained in Mexican waters for the duration of the summer, returning to the United States in October. Note the life preserver with the battleship's name on it."

The guns were coming from Germany who was emerging as a threat to the U. S. England and France prior to WWI. Germany intended to establish an alliance with victorious Mexican revolutionaries and to build a canal in Nicaragua. The U.S. had intervened in Nicaragua earlier in the century to prevent Germany from contracting with the Nicaraguan government to build a canal. If the guns had reached the revolutionaries or the Germans had built a Nicaraguan canal they would have established a foothold in the Americas. A foothold that would have been very advantageous to the Germans and Japanese in WWII. No doubt, there would have been considerable fighting in Central America for control of the region.