Conference with you. It is a pleasure to be with you because really, there is no kind of person i more enjoy talking with then teachers of history. Teachers of history have been tremendously important in my life. From high school, from college, and also people who are involved in teaching public history by working and museums and historical sites and so forth. All of them has had a huge influence on my life. I do not think i would be writing History Today were it not for two very good history teachers that i had in high school. Let me tell you a little bit about how i came to the subject that im going to talk about today. I have for a long time, as long as i can remember, been obsessed with the First World War. I had relatives on both sides of my family who fought in it in several different armies. It always has sort of seemed to me, i think the historian simon put it best, when he described the First World War as the original sin of the 20th century. So much of what has afflicted us i