PRE-PUBLICATION EDITION, THE TRUE FIRST EDITION, ONE OF 50 COPIES PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR FOR PRESENTATION. The present copy marks a pivotal moment in the lives of both Maclean and Waugh. Waugh had been invited by Randolph Churchill in July 1944 to join a military mission to Croatia under the command of Fitzroy Maclean in support of Tito and his Partisans. He spent spare hours in November correcting proofs of what he already considered his magnum opus and just before Christmas asked for 50 copies to be specially bound up to send to friends. Waugh, with Maclean's permission, had written a memorandum on Catholicism in Croatia strongly anti-Partisan (and therefore anti-UK government policy). He presented the report, Church and State in Liberated Croatia, to Maclean in person in London in March 1945. The Foreign Office, anxious to discredit Waugh (and his report), considered a court-martial for calculated indiscretions not in the interest of His Majestys Government; Maclean successfully argued against this step. Although Maclean's defence of Waugh still did not endear the two men to each other, they did respect one another and Maclean considered Waugh among English writers whose prose he admired. Maclean continued to follow Waugh's career, as his clipping of V.S. Pritchett's review of Waugh's work in The New Statesman (1949) makes clear.