TO J. O'H. COSGRAVE NEW YORK WORLD
Washington, December 21, 1917
MY DEAR JACK,—My spirit does not permit me to give you an interview on the moral benefits of the war. This would be sheer camouflage. Of course, we will get some good out of it, and we will learn some efficiency—if that is a moral benefit—and a purer sense of nationalism. But the war will degrade us. That is the plain fact, make sheer brutes out of us, because we will have to descend to the methods that the Germans employ.
So you must go somewhere else for your uplift stuff. Cordially yours,