On 13 January 1916 Cravan arrived in New York on the same ship as Leon Trotsky, Carolyn Burke notes, "just a few weeks before the Kaiser announced the resumption of attacks on steamships". On the journey Trotsky and Cravan actually became acquainted and, although Cravan reportedly liked Trotsky, he felt that "It was useless telling him the result of his revolution would be the founding of a red army to protect the red liberty". While Cravan's practices may have aligned with certain anarchist and socialist principles, he was staunchly unaffiliated, mocked all notions of progress and subscribed to no single ideology or movement.