The story of civil liberties during World War I is, in many ways, even more disturbing. When the United States entered the war in April 1917, there was strong opposition to both the war and the draft. Many citizens argued that the goal of the United States was not to “make the world safe for democracy,” but to protect the investments of the wealthy. President Woodrow Wilson had little patience for such dissent. He warned that disloyalty “must be crushed out” of existence and that disloyalty “was … not a subject on which there was room for … debate.” Disloyal individuals, he explained, “had sacrificed their right to civil liberties.”
