Early in the war, it was unclear whether British subjects living abroad could be drafted. Then the United States signed a treaty allowing exactly that. Dozens of English actors were called home to active service. With each departure, each fare-thee-well party at Harvey’s Steakhouse, or Barney Oldfield’s, more pairs of eyes turned in curiosity up the filmmaking food chain.

Months before he got his own studio, early 1917, a book of comic strips called Charlie in the Army showed the misadventures of Chaplin in basic training. There were no similar books about Mary in the Red Cross, or Jack in the Naval Reserve, or House Peters anywhere. The gags therein weren’t witty; they reminded Chaplin of Punch and Judy shows.

It puzzled him, in that people weren’t buying it because it was good, but because it reminded them of Chaplin, though—and this struck him as crucial—it was not nearly as good as he was. It seemed to render the unimaginable much less potent. If Charlie was in the army, then the army was not so awful. And if this was all that happened to him, if nothing unexpected befell him, the country would be safe. It sold tens of thousands of copies. No one spoke of having enjoyed it, but it was not quite disposable, because it further opened that door for speculation: indeed, why wasn’t Charlie in the army?

The reason was simple: the army had requested that he not join. He had been told he was symbolically more valuable making movies than being in the trenches. But certain of the War Office felt that not drafting him was another kind of symbol, a wrongheaded one, and so their arrangement was never publicized. Chaplin asked for a statement Carlyle Robinson could release to the press to ease the attacks against him, and the War Office apologized, said that would be difficult, and asked whether perhaps they could do something else.

There was. He asked for it himself, over lunch with the British attaché, rather than involving Syd. It was a favor easily granted, and the details were hidden in dossiers stamped “most secret.” The arrangement was meant to bring him relief.

For now, there was enough trouble: an ominous development in the fan-mail sacks. First one letter in a hundred, then two, then three contained nothing, no letter, no request for an autograph—just a single white feather. For cowardice.