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Morrow's most important work as a Morgan partner was in organizing a syndicate of bankers to find gold to pay New York City's obligations maturing abroad at the beginning of the War. He is also credited with the organization of the Kennecott Copper Co. and in allying General Motors with the du Pont interests.
Three years later Dwight Morrow's first civic obligation descended upon him. Press and public in New Jersey were kicking up a storm of protest about the State's prison conditions. Harried Governor Walter Evans Edge appealed to him to serve on a correctional committee. Morrow accepted, became chairman, finally knew more about prison conditions than any layman in the country. From then on his duties came thick & fast. He was sent all over the State by Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo to boom War Saving Stamps. Soon after, President Wilson put him on the Allied Maritime Transport Council, sent him to Europe. Here again Morrow proved himself fast analyst and smooth conciliator.
On the Maritime Council a good natured Admiral taught him what he liked to call Rule No. 6, a rule of conduct that was more and more on the Morrow tongue in recent months: "Don't take yourself too seriously." As a lawyer, as a banker, he once summed up his impressions of war:
"Investors who buy foreign bonds appreciate what a fruitless remedy for breach of contract war is. Who is there if a man owes him money and cannot pay, finds profit in going out and killing the debtor?"
Back from the War, Mr. Morrow was asked to raise $3,000,000 for Amherst. Then Classmate Coolidge's Administration got in public hot water for the dirigible Shenandoah's disaster. Classmate Morrow was asked to serve on an ameliorating board "for purposes of making a study of the best means of developing and applying aircraft in national defense." And two years later (1927), came the roughest assignment yet. Mexico was on the verge of confiscating foreign property. Respecting not only the House of Morgan, which had extensive Mexican holdings, but his helpful fellow-student, President Coolidge sent Ambassador Morrow to a country that diplomatic careerists avoided like a plague. By the time he got back, Ambassador Morrow's daughter Anne was married to the U. S. national hero and Mexico's Plutarco Elias Calles was calling Ambassador Morrow one of his best friends. Then to the London Naval Conference, then to stand for the Senatorial seat left awkwardly vacant when Senator Edge was sent as Ambassador to France. Bucking stiff Democratic opposition, Dwight Morrow refused to make Prohibition a campaign issue but denounced it rationally, sailed into the Senate one of the biggest little men of affairs, of experience, of generosity of opinion that ever was seated there. People missed him last week. As sheaf upon sheaf of telegrams piled up from potent men in Wall Street, in Washington, in Mexico, all over the world, the sense of personal loss was very real.