Arthur Latham Conger Jr. was an officer in the United States Army, a writer and editor. A veteran of the Spanish–American War, Philippine–American War, Boxer Rebellion, Pancho Villa Expedition, and World War I, he attained the rank of colonel and devised the World War I deception known as the Belfort Ruse. A noted theosophist, he served as president of Theosophical Society Pasadena.

Hans Gottlieb Leopold Delbrück was a German historian. Delbrück was one of the first modern military historians, basing his method of research on the critical examination of ancient sources, using auxiliary disciplines, like demography and economics, to complete the analysis and the comparison between epochs, to trace the evolution of military institutions.