Frank Cottrell-Boyce – Introduction – H ow does a nation pull itself together again after a disaster? How do we move on from overwhelm- ing experiences? There was no doubt in A. A. Milne’s mind that the First World War was a disaster. On the Somme, he’d witnessed ‘a lunacy that would shame the madhouse’. One Austrian Archduke had been killed, he said, and this ‘resulted directly in the death of ten million men who were not archdukes’. Before the war he had been a star turn at Punch under the editorship of Owen Seaman. Seaman was a gloomy character who was partly the model for Eeyore. He was also an enthusiastic publisher and perpetrator of the kind of patriotic doggerel that cheered those ten million up the line to death. Milne was painfully aware of the part that culture played in soliciting sacrifice. ‘Wars are fought for economic reasons,’ he wrote, ‘but they are fought by volunteers for sentimental reasons.’ ­Seaman whipped up a lot of sentiment. Milne had been a pacifist since 1910. Seeing the Jingo-machine close up must have left a bitter taste. The pressure of it may have been partly why – despite his pacifism – he decided to sign up in 1915. Of course he didn’t know then that this was only the first of the World Wars. He had every reason to believe that this was the War to End Wars xi