In an interview shortly before America's entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson revealed his anxieties about the likely disruptive social effects of the war on the American people. To Frank Cobb, the editor of the New York World, he observed, “Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.” Shortly thereafter, on April 4, 1917, the conservative Republican senator, Henry Cabot Lodge, offered his own views on the imminent American involvement in the war:

These reflections on the pending American war effort from two major — albeit hostile — political figures offered prescient projections about the nature and consequences the Great War in the American experience. Although they were antagonists in their political philosophies, Wilson and Lodge shared the view that victory required decisive, full-scale warfare. Wilson, however, who was a trained historian and political scientist, was keenly aware of the disruptions that had been inflicted on American society by earlier wars, and he foresaw that “making the world safe for democracy” might come at the expense of democratic institutions and practices at home.