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— Fenner Brockway 000476/04

— Wilfrid Ernest Littleboy 000485/06

— Howard Cruttenden Marten 000383/06

— Harold Frederick Bing 000358/11

Comintern personnel files, Moscow

—William Wheeldon file: 495/198/537

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sometimes, over the six years I worked on this book, I almost felt as if its subject matter were pursuing me, even when I thought I was far away from it. Crossing South Africa by car with a friend, we arrived after dark at the house of some people he knew who put us up for the night at a small town in the interior; only when driving away in the morning did I see they lived on Milner Street. After a day of work in London not connected with the book, I went to relax on the grass at Tavistock Square, happened to glance up—and there was a small monument to conscientious objectors. And the week I finished reading the proofs, we buried my wife's 98-year-old aunt in the small town in Maine where she lived; only at the cemetery did we learn for the first time, from a relative of his, that her long-dead husband had been gassed on the Western Front in 1918. "None of them liked to talk about it," he said.

Many people were willing to talk, however, not about their war experiences, but about my struggles to get that era onto paper. An array of friends, which over time began to seem as large as one of the First World War's smaller armies, provided essential help. To begin with, a low bow to all who read the manuscript and gave me their feedback: Harriet Barlow, Vincent Carretta, Vivian Dent, Elizabeth Farnsworth, Mary Felstiner, Peter Goldmark, Hermann Hatzfeldt, Tracy Kidder, Jeffrey Klein, Mark Kramer, Elinor Langer, Meghan Laslocky, Mike Meyer, Michael Rice, Rebecca Solnit, Francis Wilson, and Monty Worth. Some of them deserve an extra medal of valor for wading through an early draft that was some 60 percent longer than the book is now—a form of war against readers that ought to be outlawed by the Geneva Conventions.

For more pairs of eyes on the manuscript I'm deeply indebted to four historians of the war who generously helped this newcomer to terrain they know so well. The first of them I met next to the information desk at the British National Archives when he overheard a question I asked, and it soon became clear he knew far more than the man behind the counter. He turned out to be Julian Putkowski, and subsequently sent me a transatlantic torrent of useful references. Vigilant to the last, he gently pointed out that the lancers on the cover of this book's American edition are not British. (They're French.) Careful readings of this book by him and by Cyril Pearce in England, Peter Stansky in the United States, and Jo Vellacott in Canada—each of whom has studied this period far longer than I have—saved me from many errors. They are not responsible for any mistakes that have nonetheless subsequently crept in, or for my point of view.

As always, my wife, Arlie, was my dearest comrade-in-arms, in this book as she has been in life itself. She was with me through ups and downs, getting to know these characters as if they were members of our family, gently critiquing that endless early draft, tramping through trenches, museums, and an underground tunnel when we visited the battlefields in France, all the while writing a wise and trenchant new book of her own.

Great editors are rarer than great writers, and Tom Engelhardt, who has worked on four of my books now, is the best of them all. He has the uncanny ability to climb inside a writer's skull and see what you're trying to do better than you can, and to know exactly which notes you should strike to make the chord you've been imagining. It is all the more amazing to me that he manages to do this while simultaneously writing much of, and running, a remarkable one-man website, which keeps a close eye on the imperial dreams and delusions of our own time, www.tomdispatch.com.

At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Bruce Nichols and Andrea Schulz read the manuscript and gave me useful comments, as did my longtime