This eagerness, however, quickly deteriorated as the fervor of English patriotism contended with the horrors of the Great War: trench warfare, poisonous gasses, killing on the largest scale ever experienced, the destruction of ancient and beautiful cities all over Europe. It seemed as though two thousand years of European culture was in the process of self-destructing. On a personal level for Eliot, one of his closest friends was killed, and his own brother-in-law returned to England with personal tales of the filth and violence of the war. London teemed with foreign refugees and foreign soldiers at the same time that the entire nation was depleted of its young men.
When America entered the war in 1917, Eliot did his best to enlist. The process did not promise to be easy, though. As a married man, he wanted to be sure that he secured a post high-ranking enough to support himself and his wife. His health had never been good and he was particularly underweight and anxious at the time he applied for service. He determined that a post in intelligence would be best for him, and after a time, the United States Naval Intelligence agreed. Its officers asked him to resign his job at Lloyd's Bank, and he complied, only to discover that they were not prepared to enlist him at all, at which point he hastened back to the bank to reclaim his old job.
