Peace News , August 2014 Review by Gabriel Carlyle A. W. Zurbrugg (ed), Not Our War: Writings Against the First World War (Merlin Press, 2014; 264pp; £12.95) / Ernst Friedrich, War against war! (Spokesman, 2014; 242pp; £9.99) In the UK, the centenary of the First World War has already prompted a deluge of books, events and media coverage. The BBC alone has announced 2,500 hours of programmes, which – like 99% of the mainstream response – will doubtless run the A to B of the mainstream political spectrum. True, Thatcherite historian and apologist for imperialisms past and present, Niall Ferguson, was granted 90 mins on BBC2 to argue that Britain should have stayed out of the war, at least at the outset. In his view, it was ‘a great mistake’. Even this had to be ‘balanced’ by an hour-long slot with former Telegraph editor Max Hastings, arguing that Britain’s participation was ‘tragically necessary’. Almost completely absent, it seems, are the voices and arguments of those s