This essay explores U.S. national security interests on the World War I home-front from 1917-1921 in Newport, Rhode Island when Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt's covert operatives attempted to restrict same-sex acts through methods of entrapment. It argues that World War I provided government officials new opportunities to expand security concerns as it policed and punished gender and sexual non-conformity well before the Cold War.

Born to privilege in Boston, Frances Webster, like her peers volunteered overseas with the American Red Cross as a nurse's aide. Where the activities of other Americans during the First World War is characterized as a “culture of coercive volunterism,” Webster's reflected a more complex mixture of altruism and tourism. Her history of participation in the First World War suggests historians need more multifaceted frameworks to explain Americans' First World War service.