HTML tags will be recognised by browsers even if the file is not wrapped with an <html> tag, but only if the file is served as html. As I mentioned in a commen

HTML tags will be recognised by browsers even if the file is not wrapped with an <html> tag, but only if the file is served as html. As I mentioned in a comment above, wrap the plain text in <pre></pre> tags, serve as html, then you can use links without adding any other html at all.