War Clouds in the East is the fifth book in the story of the MacKendrick Army family; who live by West Point's motto of Duty, Honor, Country. With the war in Europe almost a year old, the MacKendricks are already involved in spite of their own country's neutrality.Fitzjames, who comprehends the significance of a growing mechanized world and the dawn of airpower, has forsaken his beloved Cavalry as it becomes increasingly obsolete. Seduced by the promise of a new challenge, he turns his talents to the shadowy world of intelligence. Oliver, newest member of West Point's Long Gray Line, must decide whether to honor a promise made to a classmate whose parents died on the Lusitania or fulfill his commitment to the Academy. Philip turns his own substantial skills to the European conflict and dons the uniform of a War Correspondent for the second time in his life. The MacKendrick women are no longer content to sit at home waiting patiently for their men to return from the front. Instead, they find their own places as nurses and journalists as the war in Europe turns into the heartbreaking stalemate of trench warfare.In War Clouds in the East, the MacKendricks find ways to serve in a conflict to which their own President Wilson keeps a stern, isolationist face as he attempts to broker a peace between the battling European nations. The MacKendrick patriarch is baffled as to why so many of his boys are at risk since the United States hasn't even entered the war. He discovers that even he will be in the thick of world events when he is called from retirement to active duty.