[World War I] Pro-war statements and speeches—as well as more coercive measures—gradually captured American public discourse in 1917. Fairly quickly, those who rejected the rationales for United States participation in the war found themselves increasingly isolated. Liberals, intellectuals, and even many socialists soon supported American intervention. A youthful critic in his twenties, Randolph Bourne wrote a bitter essay in the intellectual magazine Seven Arts, lambasting his fellow intellectuals for lining up so readily behind the war effort.

The War and the Intellectuals