So let me see if I understand this all correctly:

The Saga of Hog Island,1917-1921: The Story of the First Great War Boondoggle1
by James J. Martin

On April 6, 1917 the Congress of the United States declared war on Imperial Germany, in accord with the impassioned entreaties of President Woodrow Wilson. Barely five months after winning re-election, mainly on the slogan "He kept us out of war," the first of the great liberal heroes of the 20th century turgidly proclaimed the necessity of joining the great war now 2 1/2 years under way in the rest of the world, with the promise that further bathing the world in hot lead and blood would make the world safe for democracy and lead to a warless future.
These two goals were never approached, but the war had profound consequences nevertheless, launching a global revolution of many facets which is still going on, and in some aspects the tempo is still increasing. It is mainly irrelevant to note that the makers of this war never contemplated the possible consequences, and abusing them for their myopic preoccupations is too easy.
Without doubt the most significant impact of participation in World War One was upon the domestic scene. The Versailles Treaty, the League of Nations, the Briand-Kellogg Pact and the various other involvements in world affairs in the subsequent two decades aside, it was by far the centralizing and bureaucratizing of the United States in 1917-19 which represents the residuary and long term substance. The most remarkable aspect of this matter was the gathering together of the national economy under six great administrative boards, an experiment in economic tototalitarianism which was not lost on the politically percipient, to be revived in various forms and in other contexts ever since.
The comprehensiveness of this development was its outstanding feature, going beyond normal political partisanship and representing a mobilization of the total community in what amounts to the first essay in national state capitalism or national socialism in the United States.2 Though Americans have spoken and written many millions of words in execration of a one party state, wars in the 20th century have made possible the enjoyment of as close an approximation of a one party state as American circumstances have provided, to the great comfort and satisfaction of an immense number of the citizenry.
Under the aegis and inspiration of American wartime collectivism, there has flourished a peculiar form of cooperation between business and the state which ends up in something which is quite unlike what one finds in the peacetime world. 3 Aspects of this have persisted well after the end of wars, and have now become an integral part of the 'normal' order of affairs.4
Neither the United States nor the rest of the world got over the prodigious dislocations caused by the First World War. (Britain spent more between 1914-20 than that country spent in the previous 225 years together.)5 The world was unable to cope with 'peace' and 'normalcy' between 1919-29, and went into a steady economic decline, culminating in the collapse of 1929, which lasted over a decade. A resumption of war in 1939 set things aright once more. The war of 1939-45 was not followed by peace in the manner of 1919, but by the continuation of prodigious war expenses and concomitant employment, the so-called Cold War among the alleged victors.
The realization that war is an essential part of our world has come slowly to many, but it is being discussed more and more now, without the one time abuse and contempt that one once drew for maintaining this position. The contemporary economic disorder is still little examined in relation to the warming up of the Cold War and the phasing out of the war in Vietnam, the cause of gigantic slackening of enterprise which the re-heating of hostilities in the Middle East has not yet tightened up. A modifying factor is the continuous multi-billion dollar arms business annually with many nations not at war.

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