In the early part of the First World War, a group of theologians in Germany published a manifesto seeking to justify the actions of the German government. At the British government's request Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, took the lead in collaborating with a large number of other religious leaders, including some with whom he had differed in the past, to write a rebuttal of the Germans' contentions. Both German and British theologians based themselves on the Just War theory, each group seeking to prove that it applied to the war waged by their own side.