On 14 June 1917 President Wilson explained America’s need to defend itself as it was ushered into a war it did not want to fight: “It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as free people and of our honor as a sovereign Government.” So said Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo, in an address to the American Bankers’ Association while encouraging the issuance of war bonds. He also defined the necessity of war on the part of the United States as an imperative: “We entered the war primarily because of the persistent insults and aggressions of Germany, the wanton disregard for American rights within our own boarders as well as on the high seas, the contemptuous violation of international law, and the ruthless destruction of American life and property”.

Despite these arguments, the United States was to form a more altruistic version of its role in the war. The postwar landscape found an ailing Europe and a thriving America at economic odds. The United States painted itself as a saviour of a ravaged European continent through its military aid during the war and its economic aid after it. As Richard Edmunds wrote: “Newspapers, ministers of the Gospel and public men, overlooking entirely the reasons which caused us to go to war for our own preservation, began in 1919 a campaign of praising ourselves with pious unction …” This hypocrisy was evident in the fact that the United States faced arduous economic trials before the war and the outbreak of the war became a chance for economic redemption for the US as, Edmunds again, “the Allies were buying from us foodstuffs and ammunition by the billions of dollars, and at exorbitantly high prices … there came a rush of activity in practically all industrial interests … During the next two or three years our prosperity was fertilized by the blood of millions of soldiers dying on the battlefields of Europe.”