In the end, it was Germany that brought America into the war. Up until recently Wilson, trying to keep his country neutral, had managed to handle the Germans. When their submarines sank the Lusitania with Americans on board, he’d protested, and the German high command had stopped the submarine war. Now, however, everything had changed. The Germans had behaved abominably: seeing Russia collapsing into chaos, and the British nearly starving, they had concluded that they could win the war with a final push. Suddenly, German submarines had gone into action again. “Since your ships carry food to the British,” Germany told President Wilson, “we’ll torpedo any American vessel on the seas.” In an astounding insult to the United States, German representatives even told Mexico: “Attack America, and we’ll help you take back Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.”

It had to be war after that. The massive American mobilization now in progress would soon teach the Germans what it meant to tangle with the free nation across the Atlantic. Only last week, William and Rose had gone down Fifth to Washington Square Park to see the big bonfire where some enterprising young people were burning an effigy of the German Kaiser.

To date, the faraway European conflict had not affected the Master family very much. Indeed, William Master had been surprised to find that he had done quite well out of it. For a few months in 1914, the Stock Exchange had been closed, but a busy market in war bonds had developed, and soon there had been huge business to be done supplying the warring nations of Europe. American manufacturing was still forging ahead; Henry Ford was mass-producing cars on his new assembly lines.

In fact, the greatest immediate worry confronting Rose and William was their son Charlie.

He had not had to register for the draft, at least. That was something. The Draft Registration of May 1917 applied only to men aged twenty-one to thirty-one. But Charlie had given his parents plenty of other reasons to be apprehensive.

Rose had been concerned when Charlie had insisted on going to Columbia University instead of Harvard. “He likes being in New York,” her husband pointed out. “I know,” she’d answered. “That’s what worries me.” Quite apart from the fact that Harvard was Harvard, she’d also reckoned that Charlie would get into less trouble in Boston. “I’m just afraid that he’ll make undesirable friends.”

He had. Before he’d even gone to Columbia, Charlie had shown a precocious interest in the nightlife of the great city. He’d disappear into the theater district or Greenwich Village, and nobody would know where he was. More than once he’d come home drunk.

“And yet, underneath,” his mother quite correctly pointed out, “he’s still a child.”