Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his speech "Four Freedoms", in 1941, mentioned some things that can be considered inconsistent with the US policy, because when he says: 1<em>) "The need of the moment....is to meet this foreign peril. For </em><em>our domestic problems are now a part of the great emergency</em><em>" and 2) "Just as our national policy in internal affairs has been </em><em>based upon a decent respect for the rights and the dignity ofall our fellow men..." </em>are not consistent with all the discriminatory practices blacks faced at that time.
The RMS Lusitania was a ship that sailed from New York and had American civilians in - at that point the US was neutral in the WWI -, when the ship came to the sight of the Irish Coast the German U-boat attacked it.
Despite the fact that Americans were horrified at the Lusitania attack, many Americans did not like the idea to enter the war, Irish Americans did not enjoy the idea of helping Britain because the country denied Ireland its independence, German Americans were sympathetic towards their ancestral homeland and Americans saw no reason to enter into a war between European powers. The US only entered war two and a half years after it started.