This is the tenth  essay in my series on cultural wars: its subject is the July 1914 crisis. The previous chapter analysed the phenomenon of nationalism in two multi-national states, the Hapsburg Empire and the United Kingdom. In both, the nationalist cause won. In  the case of the Hapsburgs, the nationalists who triumphed over the dynasty celebrated the inevitability of their cause; Sinn Fein achieved its ambition to establish an independent Irish state, but failed to win over  the North to their cause. Events took the course they did, the victors argued, because the alternatives -a Hapsburg federation of nationalities, and a United Kingdom with a devolved parliament in Dublin- were no longer viable. This is the history of the victors. It does not exhaust the alternatives which were available. Nowhere is this more the case than in the events leading up to 1914.  In this chapter, we discuss three factors: the main protagonists of the war; the crisis of July 1914; and the ideas circulating prior to August 1914. The theme here is that the ideas which circulated during the “July crisis” before the outbreak of the war provide a clue to the theme of the next chapter as to why the war was continued at such a high price, and why less expensive ways in lives and money were not adopted to end the bloodletting. A central issue almost from before the outbreak of the war was the question: who was to blame? This question helped to frame  the way the war was fought, as well as to inform the consequences that flowed from its course. 

The protagonists. 

The Hapsburg Empire.

The most immediate protagonist was the Hapsburg Empire.Austria-Hungary was the quintessential multinational state, with twelve different languages, where German was set aside as the language of military command, and Magyar served as Hungary’s official language. It was ridiculed by contemporary progressives as being behind the times, and a barrier on the path to the sunlit uplands of a world of national, monolingual states. Reality of course was far removed from legend: Austria-Hungary formed the largest free trade area in Europe; it was the world’s fourth largest producer of machines, the third largest manufacturer and exporter of electrical industrial appliances, and a global leader in education. Its multi-lingual universities led in many of the natural and social sciences; in Vienna, doctorates had to be presented in Latin; the literacy rate in 1910 Austria stood at 85%, comparable to France, but less than the 98% of the UK. Austria also had an influential labour movement, state-sponsored welfare provisions, and an electorate with universal suffrage as of 1907. The judiciary was independent, and had been for at least a century; the Emperor Franz Josef enjoyed near universal acclaim. 

Its one gnawing problem was the Balkans. In 1878, Bismarck had proposed that the powers of Europe meet in congress at Berlin, under the mechanism of the Council of  Europe, to discuss the political implications of a weakening Ottoman Empire. The congress  recognized three independent states, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania, and expanded the frontiers of two more, Bulgaria and Greece. But success for this new settlement depended on co-operation between Austria-Hungary and Russia. This proved elusive. In 1908, Franz Josef took the fatal step of annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina. Annexation violated the 1878 Berlin Congress accords, upset the balance of power in the Balkans and precipitated a diplomatic crisis. ^[1]The step brought Russia and Serbia into headlong conflict with Austria-Hungary, whose internal cohesion- its leadership felt- was threatened by Serbia’s appeal to Slavic peoples. In the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, Serbia doubled its size and population; military success fueled hopes for further expansion. Austria-Hungary stood in its way. These wars demonstrated the evident decline of Turkish power; the reluctance of the Russian government to precipitate a world war by mobilising in response to a partial Austrian mobilisation; and most importantly, that the Council of Europe mechanism of the great powers deciding to settle matters together was still working: at the Treaty of London in 1913, an independent Albania was recognised and the territories of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece were enlarged. However, the treaty was followed by a renewed outbreak of war-the second Balkan war- were changes in frontiers were decided by war, not by negotiation between the powers.

The Russian Empire.

The other multi-national empire was Russia. To contemporaries, nearly everything about Russia was disconcerting.  It spanned one sixth of the world’s landmass; its population  in 1914 was 138 million; it was multi-national-80% of its subjects were Russian, the rest divided into about 180 different nationalities, large and small. It had a standing army of 1.4 million men, capable of expansion  on mobilization to 4.5 million. Tsar Alexander had ended serfdom in 1861, nobles began to sell land, which passed gradually  into the hands of an independent peasantry. As in the case of Austria-Hungary, also a predominantly agrarian economy, the lesser nobility found refuge in an expanding bureaucracy, while urbanization was accompanied by the growth of a proletariat. This in turn spurred the development of a radical politics, calling for violent revolution, forced land confiscation and repudiation of parliamentary politics. It also spurred economic growth. Russia had abundant natural resources. French foreign investment was pouring into the country, from the late 1880s onwards. A more mobile labour force prompted  rapid improvement in farm productivity making Russia into the world’s largest food exporter, larger than France and the US combined.  Growth rates in good years topped 10% per annum. Extrapolated into a near future,  Russia appeared to Berlin observers as a menace, which would be better to destroy before Germany was dwarfed. 

Historians have not been kind to Tsar Nicholas: Soviet historiography dismisses him as a cruel tyrant, while post-1990  historians maintain that he was not equal to the multiple challenges of presiding over the destinies of a fast changing society. What can definitely be said of him is that he was as inconsistent in domestic as he was in foreign policy. He came to the throne in 1894, pledging to retain autocratic power and resisting calls for political reform. In foreign policy, the Tsar  pushed for expansion both in Russia’s Pacific region and in south eastern Europe. Both proved disastrous. Russia’s territorial ambitions in the Korean peninsula instigated a war with Japan (1904-1905)- a war Nicholas and his advisers considered eminently winnable. Instead, the Japanese inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Russians, the first time in centuries a major European power had been conquered by an Asian nation. Russia’s army and navy were exposed as poorly equipped and commanded; the empire’s shortage of infrastructure, particularly railway, was also apparent. The defeat of 1905 bubbled over into revolution, driven by various revolutionary groups, industrial workers and liberals who hoped for political modernization. Nicholas issued a manifesto promising civil rights and an elected Duma (parliament) . When the moment came, though, he revoked the powers he had conceded to the Duma, and  had radical agitators rounded up to be hanged, imprisoned or exiled. The  Duma became a powerless ‘talking shop’.  Yet he  backed major reformers, such as Sergei Witte – who did much to promote industrialization and the parliamentary cause in 1905 – and Piotr Stolypin, who accelerated the sale of lands to the peasantry. Both  reformers advocated peaceful social reform and a constitutional monarchy.  Stolypin however was assassinated; Witte opposed the declaration of war in 1914, and died convinced the Tsar was leading the country to disaster.

The Tsar was equally inconsistent in foreign policy. He valued the alliance with a France, bent on revenge for the defeat of 1870; favoured war against Japan in 1904; and opted for war against Austria-Hungary in 1914. Yet  he  promoted the Hague Convention of 1899 to solve international disputes by way of appeal to an international court. This was indeed a prophetic initiative: as Count Mouravieff, the Russian Foreign Minister, stated in the Emperor’s name, the conference should “ put an end to these incessant armaments” which “are transforming the armed peace of our days into a crushing burden, which the peoples have more and more difficulty in bearing. It appears evident, then, that if this state of things were prolonged, it would inevitably lead to the very cataclysm which it is desired to avert, and the horrors of which make every thinking man shudder in advance. »^[2]  When facing defeat against Japan, though, the Tsar turned down proposals to bring the dispute before his own creation, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague, and after the naval disaster at the battle of Tsushima-when the Japanese sank the Russian fleet, the war was mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt in  the Treaty of Portsmouth. The Japanese could not but see here the inequality of racial politics at work, rather than the promotion of international law, where all states enjoyed equal rights. The Tsar then  signed an Anglo-Russian convention in 1907, ending the confrontations with the British Empire in Central Asia. Britain was allied with Japan in the 1902 accords, so the convention could not be construed as hostile to Japan. But these proceedings did not disabuse Japan from understanding international affairs in racial terms.

The United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom was both a multi-national state and an imperial centre. At the time that war was declared, the United Kingdom covered all the islands, including Ireland. The 1911 national census recorded a population of 38 million for England, 4.8 million in Scotland, 2.4 million in Wales, and 4.4 million in Ireland, a total of nearly 48 million. The country as a whole was highly industrialised, with about 80% of the total population living in towns and cities. Landownership was highly concentrated, and the aristocracy prominent in politics and business. But appearances deceived. Free trade policy, introduced in the mid-1840s, gave “new world”-North American, New Zealand and Australian farm products-free access to British markets, which kept food prices low, and the country dependent on food imports for up to 60% of needs.  Ireland had become a peasant-owned farm economy as a result of redistributive public policy. The House of Lords,  still largely dominated by the hereditary aristocracy, had its powers further clipped in 1911, as the House of Commons became incontestably dominant. This widening power of the Commons was in any case inevitable given the step-by-step expansion of the electorate in 1832, in 1867, and again in 1884. The House was directly elected, with 60% of the male population voting. There was no significant support for a protectionist policy of any sorts, in agriculture or in manufacturing. In manufacturing, the UK economy was losing market share to US and German competitors, who enjoyed non-reciprocated access to UK markets. On the other hand, the country dominated world shipping, with at least 50% of the world total, while London was undisputed centre of the global financial system. Figures on comparative per capita income are contested, and approximate, but they provide a guide: World Bank figures suggest that British per capita income in 1913 stood at 96% to the US 100%, compared to Germany’s 56% and France’s 48%.^[3]  Ireland’s per capita income was similar to that of France and Germany.^[4]

The United Kingdom was the centre of what was by far the world’s largest empire, many of whose inhabitants considered themselves British, or if not British as in India, loyal to the Crown. The British Empire was essentially a maritime power, having seen off a German challenge in the form of  a battleship building programme, and ending in an almost 2:1 advantage over Germany  in terms of warships of various kinds. The imperial army was small, numbering about 240 thousand volunteers each in the UK and in India. The populations of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand numbered about 18 million, and as many were first generation immigrants, considered themselves British, they signed up for military service as soon as war was declared in August 1914. The population of British India numbered over 300 million, and proved a major source of soldiers in the 1914-18 war, with over 1.5 million Indian troops serving under the British flag. One result of this contribution to the common war effort was that, at the end of the war,  Indian cadets were granted full commissions, with full authority over British troops. This was a major, but far from sufficient step towards creating equality of rights across the multi-national empire. The empire itself was a free trade empire, so trade patterns-to the great frustration of imperial trade dirigistes- did not follow political directives. Due to its free trade policy, Britain became the centre of a complicated network of multilateral settlements in the world economy, as well as the world’s prime creditor. It is true that Britain was able to overcome the tariffs imposed by Germany and the US through its exports to the Indian market, but the open British economy ensured the dynamic continuation of the multilateral trading system. As S.B.Saul concludes, “Undoubtedly British policy…permitted the world trading system to grow remarkably rapidly and peacefully” in the pre-war years. ^[5]

A major paradox of Britain’s position in the world is  that it had become the centre to the world’s multi-lateral trading and finance system, but at the same time it remained isolated from entanglement in the affairs of Europe, and indeed of the rest of the world. Lord Salisbury famously  described British policy as comparable to a punter on a clear summer’s day, floating “lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boathook to avoid collisions.” This relaxed approach to international affairs became more difficult to sustain as the US, then Germany, made clear that they were determined to take their place in the diplomatic limelight. In 1895,  President Cleveland  asserted that British claims on Guyana transgressed the Monroe Doctrine for Europeans to stay away from involvement in the affairs of the Americas. Cleveland objected to British  claims on Guyana,  and Salisbury agreed to the matter being adjudicated by tribunal. The cordial manner in which the negotiations were conducted set the longer term tone for better relations between Washington and London. ^[6] Following the embarrassments arising from the Boer War of 1899-1902, London signed agreements with Japan (1902), France (1904) and Russia (1907), to settle differences over conflicts of interest in China and Korea, Africa and Central Asia. In retrospect, these arrangements have been interpreted as putting an end to Britain’s “splendid isolation”. More to the point, Britain was never disinterested in the affairs of the continent: As David Lloyd George stated in a famous speech at the Mansion House in 1911, “if a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficient position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure”. 

France.

This statement was directed at Franco-German relations, where it had become  difficult to imagine the United Kingdom standing aside, as had been the case in 1870, the last time that the two had come to blows. France was Germany’s prime enemy. Paris had never accepted Germany’s absorption of Alsace and Lorraine and every aspect of national policy converged on their recovery. A permanent concern for French patriots was the low birth rate, yielding a population of 41 million contrasted to Germany’s 65 million at the start of the war in 1914. How to compensate for the demographic shortfall was their constant refrain. Successive governments between 1872 and 1905 passed laws in favour of a mandatory, universal two-year military service ; Colonel Charles Mangin, in his book La Force Noire, ^[7] drew attention to France’s colonies as a source of recruitment for the armed services. France had over 55 million inhabitants outside of the mainland. But the  implication was-as in the case of the British Empire-that all citizens of the Empire would have to be equal before the law, if the ultimate sacrifice were to be demanded of them, and were they to serve as citizens of “la grande nation”. But at the time, extending national military service to the colonies was suspect on racial grounds; even so just under 600,000 colonial troops served under French colours during the 1914-18 war. So the only other option to try to make good the demographic shortfall was to extend the two years of compulsory military service to three. The step was taken  in 1913. In this way, the Republic was able to present the army as the nation at arms, an army of citizen-soldiers prepared to defend the homeland, nothing like the professional army defeated at Sedan in 1870. But there could be no disguising the fact that were war to be joined, French losses proportionate to population would be very high.

Gradually, France recovered from the devastating political and economic blow of defeat in 1870. The political blow was expressed in a more febrile nationalism, the search for scapegoats and a thoughtless militarism. Anti-semitism grew apace  at the time of the Panama canal scandal, and  the Dreyfus affair, while France was fortunate not to have been dragged into war with Germany by General Boulanger. The loss of Alsace and Lorraine also made Germany that much less vulnerable , given the military value of Metz and Strasburg. Defeat for France in 1870 was also an economic blow in that Lorraine was a major source of iron ore, providing about 90% of Germany’s iron ore in 1914. A German-owned steel industrry developed there as did a booming phosphate industry providing fertiliser to German farms. Without Alsace and Lorraine, France lost 4% of its population and became that much more agricultural an economy.  Over 55% of inhabitants lived in municipalities of less than 2000 people.  but this small town, small business France gradually recuperated. The pre-war decades  were among the best the country had experienced. The franc was stable, strong and convertible into gold. Paris was Europe’s second financial centre, following London. France was the world’s fourth largest industrial power, and political stability returned.  Alliance with Russia, the entente cordiale with Britain, and the development of the French Empire, meant a wider access to resources, both demographic, industrial and diplomatic, than in the immediate years following the defeat of 1870. Still, there could be no gainsaying the fact that France lagged Germany: its population and economy were two_thirds that of Germany;  steel production was one third Germany’s; machine tool exports were 41% of Germany.  More worrying still, German per capita income was growing much faster, so Germany’s dominance could only be expected to grow.

Germany.

Germany was, and remains, the central protagonist of European affairs, and for two related reasons. First, it is surrounded by neighbours: in 1914, these were Denmark to the North, the Russian Empire to the East; the Austrian-Hungarian Empire to the South-East; Switzerland to the South; and France, Belgium, and The Netherlands to the West. Second, all European states have an interest in what goes on in Germany. This was the case in the medieval world, and it has been in modern times at least since the  Treaty of Westphalia, concluded in 1648, wherein France and Sweden obtained oversight of developments among the 300 or so states of the Holy Roman Empire. This arrangement came to an end with the  Hapsburg Empire’s defeat at the battle of Austerlitz in December 1805, whereupon the Emperor Francis II decided to dissolve the Empire, and Napoleon created a Confederation of the Rhine- a confederation of client states loyal to France. 

In the words of James Bryce in his 1864 history of the Holy Roman Empire, the Empire was the “oldest political institution in the world’, founded -Bryce claims- by Augustus in 27 BC, and lying at the heart of European affairs for nearly two millenia. ^[8] In Germany, its demise was considered a disaster, particularly by the nationalists who were inspired to emulate France, evict European supervision from German affairs, and create an independent nation state. They did not succeed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, where wisdom prevailed, and a German Confederation under Hapsburg leadership was created. European oversight was ensured through the Council of Europe, but these arrangements were weakened by the revolutions of 1848-1849, when the Frankfurt Parliament, elected by the people of the Confederation, voted to exclude the multi-national peoples of Hapsburg Austria from the new Germany.  They failed and a national  Germany on their design was united in January 1871 by force of arms. The new state changed the title of the federal state to German Empire; adopted universal male suffrage; and installed Prussia as the dominant political force. 

The German constitution of April1871 has been called Bismack’s constitution. Executive power was vested in the hands of the Emperor, who was also King of Prussia. He appointed the chancellor, usually the person able to command the confidence of the Reichstag. The chancellor, in consultation with the emperor, determined the broad outlines of government policy, and presented them to the Reichstag. The Reichstag was elected by universal suffrage, but could be disbanded by decree of the Emperor, who had the power to call new elections; legislation also required consent of the Bundesrat, the federal council of deputies from the 27 states. But Prussia held the whip hand there. It  contained two-thirds of the Empire’s population and territory; its landed élite, the Junckers, retained extensive powers, through over-representation of rural areas; and Prussia remained the dominant influence in the prolonged process of legal codification that accompanied the creation of the Germany nation-state from 1871 to 1914. On the advice of the chancellor, the emperor appointed the ministers and all other imperial officers. All non-war measures required the counter-signature of the Chancellor. But the Emperor could dismiss the Chancellor; he was also commander-in-chief of the  armed forces, and final arbiter in foreign affairs. When William II took power in 1889, after dismissing Bismarck, he began to assert his prerogatives, and unlike his predecessors, became actively engaged in the affairs of state.  But his interest proved intermittent; his intervention in public affairs embarrassing; and his statements on international affairs, unnecessarily offensive to his foreign audiences. As Ardan Bucholz  has written, about 50 people had direct access to the Kaiser, but,  there was little sharing of information between them-particularly on military affairs.^[9]

Germany’s political system sat atop a dynamic economy. Industrialisation grew rapidly as Germany united and urbanised. Between 1870 and 1913, German per capita incomes grew at the rate of 2.8% per annum; the population expanded from a largely rural population of 41 million to a predominantly urbanised 68 million people, who were better educated, more skilled, and lived longer. Technological progress occurred in waves: the first was the railway wave  as know-how was imported from Britain, and then developed locally; railway production boosted steel and iron production; technical savvy spilled over into dye production, followed by the expansion of the chemical industry. Each wave gave rise to large Konzerne: Krupps for steel; BASF, Bayer and Hoechst dominated dye production; these three, and five smaller firms built the world’s premier chemical industry; Siemens and AEG led the way in electrical engineering. The size and complexity of these industrial operations required that they be in the hands of professional salaried managers; in turn, the spin-offs from these giant industrial enterprises generated new products and new industries.^[10] By 1914, Germany had become Europe’s prime manufacturer, and exporter with 16% of world output, compared to the United States 35% and Great Britain’s 15%. Britain though was dominant in finance, and could recruit troops among the 350 million population of India. 

By 1914, the German Social Democratic Party was  the leading party in the Reichstag, committed by its Marxist roots to the cause of international justice for working people, and hence for international peace. But Bismarck hated socialists as much as he despised liberals, and disapproved of Catholics. He had waged a Kulturkampf against southern German and Polish Catholics, submitting Catholic schools to state supervision; made the nomination of Catholic priests dependent on their attending German universities; and gave the Protestant Prussian state authority over the appointment of Catholic clergy. The unexpected consequence of this frontal attack on Catholics was to boost voter adherence to the Catholic Centre Party, which quickly became the second largest party in the Reichstag. It soon became apparent that no government could be formed without a Catholic say-so.  As Bismarck was also wooing the support of both industrial Konzerne and its skilled workers by high tariffs, it was not too much of a leap for Bismarck to drop his hostility to Catholics, recruit them in his opposition to socialists, and roll out welfare provisions to give workers a stake in the new Germany. Hence, when the SPD was confronted with the choice in August 1914 of voting funds for war to defend Germany against Imperial and reactionary Russia, it dropped its pacifism and voted national. The SPD acknowledged the government’s position that Germany was engaged in a defensive alliance, and encircled by enemies.

War, though, has been  the decisive factor in German history. The battle of Königgrätz in 1866 decided that Austria-Hungary, a multi-national entity, would remain outside of the German nation state. It was also war that decided Germany’s victory over France in 1870. Proclamation of the new German Empire from the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles was a political act of vengeance  over Germany’s hereditary enemy for the two defeats at Austerlitz and Jena in 1805 and 1806. It was at odds with Bismarck’s subsequent initiatives to calm the tensions resulting from Germany’s eruption as Europe’s prime power, its belittling of France, and subordination of Austria-Hungary to quasi-client status. His two areas of concern were the Balkans and France: in the Balkans, the weakening of the Ottoman Empire threatened to  lead to conflict between Austria-Hungary and Russia;  and France desired vengeance for 1870 against Germany. Its obvious ally was Russia: so Bismarck kept renewing his alliance with Russia in 1873, in 1878, in 1881 and again in 1887 in order to deprive France of an ally to Germany’s east. Tensions between Vienna and St Petersburg over the Balkans kept breaking out, encouraging France to keep fishing for its Russian alliance. Its chance came when Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck, and ditched the Russian alliance. This was arguably the Kaiser’s first major diplomatic blunder. France pounced at the opportunity. The Franco-Russian alliance was confirmed in 1892; French investments poured into Russia; and the Russian economy began to grow at 10% per annum. Wilhelm proved  incapable of conjuring Bismarck’s  myriad of complex alliances, the purpose of which was simply to keep Germany from being isolated in a web of hostile coalitions. To make matters worse, he then embarked on a bellicose “Weltpolitik”, that soured relations between the European powers, and helped to sour relations between the powers in the events leading up to the crisis of July  1914. 

The July 1914 crisis.

The immediate cause of the July crisis was the assassination of the heir to the Hapsburg throne. Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne,  had gone with his wife, Sophie, to Bosnia-Herzogovina , a territory claimed by a Serbia but recently annexed by Vienna in 1908. The Emperor Franz Josef had ordered his heir to attend military manouevres there, and  Franz Ferdinand had accepted as the visit would coincide with the fourteenth anniversary of his  marriage, the 28^th of June; unfortunately, the Serbs commemorated that day as the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 against the Ottomans.  Nationalists saw the royal presence as a provocation; Franz-Josef’s heir apparent was an ideal target. Five Bosnian Serbs and one Bosnian Muslim lay in wait along the announced motorcade route. At 10:10 a.m.,Nedeljko Cabrinovic  threw a hand grenade at Ferdinand’s motorcade damaging the following car and injuring its occupants.Ferdinand determined to visit the injured, after which he decided to leave Sarajevo. But his automobile turned down the wrong street; Gavrilo Princip, standing nearby,  seized his opportunity, fired his pistol and killed both Ferdinand and Sophie in their open-top automobile. The conspirators were quickly rounded up. 

The  plan for his assassination had been  hatched within the government bureaucracy in Belgrade. But the Serbian government denied knowledge of the plot, and turned down requests from Vienna and Berlin to investigate the chain of events. Elections were scheduled for August 14, the assassination was popular, and  Prime Minister Pašić was unwilling to risk his chances at the polls by seeming to be sympathetic to Vienna. In Vienna, on the other hand, the assassination strengthened the hand of those calling for vengeance. Foreign Minister Leopold Berchtold favoured an ultimatum to make Serbia backdown. The Chief of the General Staff, Conrad von Hötzendorff, was for war. Franz-Joseph left decision-making to his ministers and chief of staff.  But both Prime Ministers of Hungary and Austria were either against the war or for delay. Opinion in Vienna was divided. The key lay in Berlin. On July 5, the German Emperor, William II, informed the Austrian-Hungarian ambassador, Count Ladislaus von Szögyény-Marich, that his state could “count on Germany’s full support”, even if “grave European complications” ensued. ^[11] This has been termed “the blank cheque” of German support for the Hapsburg Empire, up to and including war, and the main factor that shaped Austro-Hungarian policy in July 1914. ^[12]

German and Austrian-Hungarian thinking did not add up to a clear set of policy recommendations. The Kaiser and Berchtold were both of one mind that it would be a good idea to go on holiday in order not to alarm public opinion that war was afoot. ^[13] They had good reason to bide for time, because circumstances did not dictate a clear-cut decision for or against war. Two key questions failed to deliver clear answers: could the war be kept local, and could it be kept short? 

Kaiser Wilhelm hoped that a war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia could be kept local, but this was no more than a hypothesis. The problem here was whether or not Russia would intervene on Serbia’s behalf: those advocating a local and short sharp war pointed out that it was scarcely coherent for an absolute monarchy such as  Tsarist Russia to back  a regicide regime like Belgrade appeared to be , not least because Russia’s French financed rearmament programme was scheduled for completion in 1917. That was true enough, but then pan-Slav voices in St Petersburg were clamouring for mobilization; the Emperor Franz-Joseph was intent on vengeance and Kaiser Wilhelm was much affected by the death of his friend, Franz Ferdinand. The pro-war-now faction thought it best in terms of public opinion to strike soon while the memory of the assassination was fresh. Waiting to complete judicial enquiries would muddy the waters, promote second thoughts, and allow tensions to fester. If Austria-Hungary dithered and delayed, the suspicion could take shape that it was looking for an excuse for war that had little to do with vengeance for Franz Ferdinand’s death, and rather more to shoring up its reputation in the Balkans. Austria-Hungary chose to dither.

The Austrian-Hungarian Council of Ministers debated what to do on July 7. The hawks, led by Berchtold, urged a surprise attack on Serbia as soon as possible. ^[14] They acknowledged that Russia might intervene on Serbia’s behalf, but considered that strong German support would force Russia to keep out of a Balkan war, and in doing so, would weaken its prestige in the region.^[15] Of course, that was also a reason why Russia would intervene in order to preserve prestige. Count Istvan Tisza, the leading voice against war and Hungarian Premier, urged a sound “juridical basis for a declaration of war”, ^[16] and warned that an attack on Serbia “would, as far as can humanly be foreseen, lead to an intervention by Russia and hence a world war”.^[17] The discussion then turned on the wording of an ultimatum, with all present, except for Tisza, agreeing on Austria-Hungary presenting an ultimatum designed to be rejected. ^[18]

In the following days, Berlin pressed for action as soon as possible.  Vienna however took its time. Berlin expressed exasperation when the Austro-Hungarian investigators into the assassination of Franz Ferdinand reported that “there is nothing to prove or even to suppose that the Serbian government is accessary to the inducement for the crime..” ^[19] The reaction in Berlin gave rise to fears in Vienna that Germany might renounce the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary.^[20] They need not have worried.  Many officials in Berlin believed that a race war between the Teutons and the Slavs was in the making, and the sooner it was launched the better. Russia was growing so fast, that Germany, it was feared,  would be dwarfed, and  also encircled by enemies. ^[21] The hawks in Vienna, though, argued for delay: arch-Austro-Hungarian hawk, Conrad von Hötzendorf, considered that the earliest Vienna could declare war was July 25, when the summer harvest would be in. ^[22]The date coincided fortuitously with the completion of the ongoing Franco-Russian summit between President Raymond Poincaré and Tsar Nicholas. ^[23] Draft texts of the ultimatum circulated between Berlin and Vienna during the days between July 12 to July 22. 

On July 23, the ultimatum, containing an expiry date of July 25, was presented to the Serbian government; Article 6 of the ultimatum demanded that Austro-Hungarian law enforcement officers  take part in the investigations. The historian, Fritz Fischer, writes that in supporting Vienna’s war with Serbia, Germany’s leadership knew the risks of a general war. ^[24] The evidence is in no way conclusive: rather, the evidence suggests that the German leadership hoped the risks of a general war would be minimal. They did so because they thought that making clear that Berlin backed Vienna would act as a deterrent to Paris, St.Petersburg and London. In other words, they stand guilty of miscalculating. There were too many imponderables in their assumptions. They also thought it worth while to indulge in some theatrical subterfuge: the whole German military and political leadership went on vacation to signal that they were relaxed about current affairs. ^[25]

One of Berlin’s prime sins of omission was to fail to understand the thinking of other European capitals. Indeed, Berlin had other capitals think what they wanted them to think; had they made the effort to put themselves in the shoes of their prospective opponents, they may have realized how hypothetical their while intellectual edifice was. They were not alone in committing this crucial error of omission.

The French political leadership did not even bother to think about what others were thinking. The Franco-Russian alliance of 1892 onwards was a central feature of French foreign policy. Its purpose was crystal clear.  Its purpose was to contain a rising Germany. That is what the French leadership was thinking. Otherwise, Russia and France had nothing in common in terms of domestic politics: Russia was an absolutist monarchy, and France, a Republic. The visit of President Poincaré, and his Prime Minister, René Viviani, to Russia in the week of July 15 to July 23, was designed to inject purpose into the relationship. As Christopher Clarke writes, “Poincaré had come to preach the gospel of firmness and his words had fallen on ready ears”. There was to be no concession to Austria-Hungary on Serbia, and no thought “whatsoever to what measures Austria-Hungary might legitimately be entitled to take in the aftermath of the assassinations”. ^[26] The ultimatum was delivered on the day that the French delegation departed from Russia. The French and Russian public position on the July crisis was thus completely intransigent. Russia would not tolerate Austria-Hungary’s using threatening language against Serbia let alone taking military measures. France did not consider Austria-Hungary’s case against Serbia to have any validity. 

This injection of clarity into the proceedings, however, was offset by imperial backslidings in Berlin and St. Petersberg. Nicholas II told the Serbs to accept the ultimatum, and hope that the Austro-Hungarians would change their mind as public opinion turned against the idea of a wider war. ^[27] When it was suggested that William II should be more present in the proceedings, the German Foreign Ministry stated that William should continue his North Sea cruise, because “everything must be done to ensure that he does not interfere in things with his pacifist ideas”. ^[28]Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, then entered the fray , hoping to bring Anglo-German co-operation to bear in favour of a peaceful solution. ^[29] On July 23, Grey made a mediation offer with a promise that his government would attempt to influence Russia to get Serbia to back down, while Germany would influence Austria-Hungary as the surest way to avoid a general war. ^[30]Grey’s proposal was brushed aside by William II, apparently because he resented what he took to be Grey’s “condescension”. Russia was lukewarm, fearing that a meeting of all the powers would break apart the Triple Entente between France, Russia and England. ^[31] In other words, the Russians considered that 1815 Council of Europe mechanism could no longer function. Here is the case, for the contention that the fault in the outbreak of the war was systemic. It was beyond any one of them, alone or together, to prevent events taking their own course.

Christopher Clarke has written that it is difficult to understate the importance of the Russian Council of Minister meetings that occurred on July 24^th and 25^th.^[32] The stage had been set by the confrontation within the German leadership between those, like Germany’s Prime Minister Theobold von Bethmann Hollweg, who hoped for a limited war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and the military leadership, which considered that the time was ripe to follow up a local war against Serbia with a German attack on Russia, and an attack on France through Belgium. On the 24^th July, Berlin sent a note to its ambassadors that it knew nothing of the ultimatum.^[33] This was of course a strait lie. At the very least, it indicated that Berlin was not interested in Grey’s proposal of mediation. Of course, the British Cabinet was likely not apprised of this message. But there had been sufficient signs that it was perhaps time for the Cabinet to discuss foreign affairs. ^[34] Prime Minister Asquith wrote to his lover, Venetia Stanley, that the world was living through “the most dangerous situation of the last 40 years”. ^[35] He was only too accurate: that day, Serbia mobilized; Vienna broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia; ^[36] on the 25^th July, the Emperor Franz-Joseph signed an order for operations to begin against Serbia on 28 July; in Paris, the government cancelled all leave for troops; ^[37] Tsar Nicholas attended a Council of Ministers at which he put the Russian army on alert. This Russian move was made public on July 28,  ^[38] and cancelled  out any noises emanating from the Russian leadership in favour of moderation. The  robust Franco-Russian statement from the recent state visit to St Petersburg had indicated in any case that moderation was not on the cards. This was the moment when the sound of boots could be heard. 

What Russia signalled for public consumption was not necessarily what its leadership thought, nor was it what the leadership told the Serbs. The talk at the Council of Ministers of July 25 had been belligerent, but the  Russian Agricultural Minister, Alexander Krivoshein, who enjoyed the Tsar’s confidence, had argued that Russia was not prepared for a conflict with the Central Powers, and that its objectives could be achieved short of war. “…[O]ur rearmament programme had not been completed and it seemed doubtful whether our Army and Fleet would ever be able to compete with those of Germany and Austria-Hungary as regards modern technical efficiency … No one in Russia desired a war. The disastrous consequences of the Russo-Japanese  War had shown the grave danger which Russia would run in case of hostilities. Consequently our policy should aim at reducing the possibility of a European war, but if we remained passive we would attain our objectives … In his view stronger language than we had used hitherto was desirable.” ^[39] This stance aligned  with the Tsar’s instincts, and Russian policy continued to pressure the Serbs to accept the ultimatum as far as possible.^[40]

Meanwhile, senior British officials told Grey that his proposal for negotiation was getting nowhere and that  they considered that Germany was working in bad faith. Grey discounted the warning and persisted in his policy that Germany was interested in calling a halt to war. ^[41]  He had good reason to persist: the matter was far from settled.  The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the German ambassador in Paris that France was eager to find a peaceful solution, ^[42] while William II, acknowledging the Serbian reply to the ultimatum, declared, to the consternation of his Foreign Office officials, that a peaceful outcome was now on the cards. Fritz Fischer writes that his military and diplomatic service sabotaged William’s initiative to influence Vienna in the direction of moderation, and that there was even talk of a coup d’état to depose him. ^[43] His Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg was at the time a hawk and sought to   make Russia appear the aggressor, because he had received the pledge of SPD leaders that they would support the government if Germany were faced with a Russian attack. ^[44] On July 26, Kaiser William II returned to Kiel from his North Sea Cruise, and confronted his Chancellor with the multiple deceptions he had perpetrated. The Chancellor offered his resignation. No, said William, “You’ve made this stew. Now you are going to eat it”. ^[45] That day, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, placed the British Navy on a war footing. 

The next day, on July 27, Austria-Hungary completed preparations for war. ^[46] In Berlin, the Foreign Ministry was doing its best to seem to comply with Grey’s wishes, in order to ensure England’s neutrality. As Austria-Hungary’s ambassador to Berlin wrote: “If Germany candidly told Grey that it refused to communicate England’s peace plan, that objective [ensuring British neutrality in the coming war] might not be achieved.” Grey sensed that something was afoot, and warned the  British Cabinet that they soon would be facing a choice between neutrality or war. ^[47] But on July 28^th, he sent a fourth offer of mediation, this time coming from King George V himself. The note affirmed that the King desired that “British-German joint participation, with the assistance of France and Italy, may be successful in mastering in the interest of peace the present extremely serious situation”. ^[48] This time, there was no pretense: Berlin firmly rejected the proposal, and the Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, told Vienna that they should attack Serbia immediately or the British peace proposal might be accepted. ^[49] On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia;  ^[50] and  turned down an offer from St Petersburg to mediate, while Moltke had the German military attaché in Belgium ask for permission for German troops to transit on the way to attack France, ^[51] and suggested that Vienna order a general mobilization for war against Russia. ^[52]

By now, the chances of peace were fading fast. Grey persisted on pushing his proposal, but combined that with an order to alert British armed forces. ^[53] On July 29, Bethmann Hollweg told Edward Goschen, the British ambassador in Berlin, that Germany was going to violate Belgian neutrality, go to war with France and Russia, and hoped that England would remain neutral in the conflict. As Fischer writes, the British Cabinet now became aware that Germany had no interest in peace. ^[54] So Grey made known to Bethmann Hollweg that he remained anxious for a four-power conference, but that if Germany attacked France, England would have no other option but to enter the war on France’s side. ^[55] This prompted Bethmann Hollweg to about turn his policy by 180 degrees, and suddenly push for peace. Vienna, he said, had to negotiate with Russia, and go soft on Serbia. 

But he was no longer in charge. Commitments had been made: Austria-Hungary had already declared war on Serbia on July 28. On July 30, Tsar Nicholas ordered a partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary; the Russian War Ministry insisted on a general mobilization, and the Tsar gave in on July 31.  In Christopher Clarke’s words: “The Russian general mobilization was one of the most momentous decisions of the July crisis”.^[56] This thrilled Bethmann Hollweg, because Russia could now be presented as the guilty party. ^[57] Kaiser and Tsar had been in correspondence over these days, in a desperate hope to put a stop to the approach of war.  Tsar Nicholas had even proposed submitting the matter to the judgement of the Hague conference. ^[58] But they were brushed aside by diplomats and generals. Near midnight of that same day, the German ambassador to Russia delivered an ultimatum for Russia to step mobilization with 12 hours or Germany would mobilise too. ^[59] Under the Schlieffen Plan, mobilization of German troops involved their invading Belgium immediately. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, German troops entered Luxemburg, and French mobilization was ordered. Grey made clear to the German ambassador in London that if Germany invaded Belgium, Britain would go to war. The next day, a German ultimatum was delivered to Belgium to allow free passage for the German army to transit to France. King Albert of Belgium refused the German request. On August 3, Germany declared war on France, and on August 4 on Belgium. 

On August 3, Sir Edward Grey gave a crucial speech in the House of Commons. He re-emphasised his commitment to peace, but also his speech dripped with ambiguity. ^[60] He “understood” that Berlin would be prepared, in the event of British neutrality, not to attack the northern coast of France. Britain, he indicated, would be under an obligation, if Belgium were invaded, “ to do its utmost to  prevent the consequences to which those facts will lead if they were undisputed”. The clearest he could get to was that he could tell the House that it was not possible to remain uncommitted on the matter of Belgian neutrality: if we were to fail to support France, “we should, I believe, sacrifice our respect and good name and reputation before the world, and should not escape the most serious and grave economic consequences”. These words, keeping open the prospect of agreement with Berlin, were accompanied by an ultimatum on August 4, by the British ambassador in Berlin, to halt Germany’s violation of Belgium neutrality. The ultimatum was rejected, and Britain declared war on Germany that same day.

Luigi Albertini writes that German violation of Belgian neutrality formed the casus belli  for Britain’s declaration of war. ^[61] This was true as far as it went. But there were more weighty domestic and foreign policy considerations: both weighed heavily on the final decision. David Lloyd George, the leader in the Cabinet of ministers who favoured staying out of the war, switched sides to the pro-French faction on the grounds that Britain had to stand by the rights of small nations, of which, self-evidently, Lloyd George considered himself a representative. John Redmond, leader of the Irish nationalists, came out in support of the government for similar reasons. The foreign policy reasons were hypothetical, but no more weighty for that: had Britain not backed France, and Germany won the ensuing war, the country would be without allies on the European continent, facing a dominant and hostile German-French coalition. As Clarke points, out that would have left both Britain and the Empire vulnerable to attack. ^[62] The hard-headed nonchalance of Lord Salisbury’s definition of British foreign policy was no more. A local Balkan dispute had turned into a wider war.

The ideas of August 1914.

The initial response across Europe to the assassinations in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 was of widespread sympathy to Austria-Hungary, and to the old Emperor. George V (1865-1936), King of Great Britain, ordered a week’s mourning at court; Tsar Nicholas of Russia conveyed heart-felt regrets to Vienna;^[63] Kaiser William II was much afflicted by the death of Franz Ferdinand, whom he had met only weeks before; President Poincaré (1860-1934) of France sent a letter of condolences. European  newspapers did not hold back: on June 29, the Berliner Lokal-Anzeigerreported that the news of the assassination of the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne hit “like lightning strike”; ^[64] The Times of London, stated that the assassination of the Archduke “has produced horror and consternation throughout Europe”; Le Figaro provided a factual account, while La Croix the Catholic newspaper, expressed concern that the assassination would weaken the Catholic monarchy, which it hoped would prosper in order to reach reconciliation with France, the better to counter the German empire. The Dutch newspapers took until June 30 to catch up with the news. There was no immediate concern that this event would lead to much more than a local and short war in the Balkans. Yet six weeks later, war had been declared between all the major European powers. 

The change of mood can be followed through the columns of The Times of London. Mid-July, the tone of the paper was soothing: Sir Arthur Nicholson,  senior official in the Foreign Office, wrote on July 15^th that “the tragedy of Sarajevo  will not lead to a major European crisis”. This definitely was his preference. The next day, The Times backed this up with an article, arguing that Kaiser Franz-Josef would act cautiously.  The hope involved some wishful thinking, because the Emperor was determined to punish Serbia, and the public sentiment in the Empire was far from thinking pacifist thoughts. The mood began to change from July 22 onwards, when Henry Wickham Steed, with the support of Lord Northcliffe, the newspaper’s proprietor, began to take a more bellicose line in the editorials. Wickham Steed had been The Times correspondent in Vienna from 1901 to 1913, and had developed an intense dislike of the Hapsburg Empire. On July 25, The Times observed that “we stand upon the edge of war”. In the editorials of July 29 and 31, Steed urged that the British Empire join the fray. On July 31, he labelled the impending war “ a dirty German-Jewish international financial attempt to bully us into advocating neutrality”.^[65] Nothing of course could have been further from the truth: the City of London, where Hamburg bankers were prominent, was adamantly pro-neutrality, and Lord Rothschild wrote to the Kaiser, to the effect that war was not the way to proceed. On August 1,  The Times opened its columns to nine Cambridge academics, who affirmed that “ We regard Germany as a nation leading the way in Arts and Sciences, and we have all learnt and are learning from German scholars. War upon her in the interests of Serbia and Russia will be a sin against civilization…”. But Steed was in the driving seat: on August 3, The Times declared, “Europe is to be the scene of the post terrible war that she has witnessed since the fall of the Roman Empire… The blame must fall mainly on Germany”. In the House of Commons, Sir Edward Grey provided the prime reason for British policy: “Britain, he said, must take a stand “against the unmeasured aggrandizement of any power whatsoever”. 

Why war broke out has remained controversial ever since. A favourite theme is that Europe was a continent of unbridled nationalism. Definitely, nationalism was a contributing factor: it informed Serbian expansionism; it coloured exclusive and competitive territorial claims; it merged with social Darwinist ideas about the inevitability of boundless competitition; it penetrated religious sensitivities; progressives everywhere promoted it as the answer to the world’s ills. But it was not alone. War was far from uniformly acclaimed. Nor was it foreordained. Had Franz Ferdinand’s autocade taken a different turning at Sarajevo, he may have lived. Chance played a part, as did human defects, faulty political institutions and a failing Concert of Europe. There was no inevitability that economic competition would spill over into security competition. “Capitalists”, as Leninists repeatedly affirmed, were not uniformly gung-ho for war. What however cannot be denied is that the war was a tragedy, and that the small band of people who led  Europe to disaster were well aware of the fact. As John Keegan has written:  “World War One  was a tragic and unnecessary conflict: unnecessary because the train of events that led to its outbreak might have been broken at any point during the five weeks of crisis that preceded the first clash of arms, had prudence or goodwill found a voice; tragic because the consequences of the first clash ended the lives of 10 m human beings, tortured the emotional lives of millions more, destroyed the benevolent and optimistic culture of the European continent and left…a legacy of political rancour and racial hatred so intense that no explanation of the causes of the second world war can stand without reference to these roots”.^[66]

The small band of people who led Europe to disaster were all acquainted, by training or by hearsay, with the teachings of Carl von Clausewitz, the student of the wars of Frederick the Great and of Napoleon, the author of On War, his classic study on the subject. War-“an  act of force, according to Clausewitz, to compel our enemy to do our will”- was something entered into with great caution. It was “the continuation of policy with other means”, “ a fascinating trinity-composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; the play of chance and probability, within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy which makes it subject to pure reason”. This phenomenon-a blind force, chance, and reason-induces “bloody slaughter”, but at its heart is unpredictable. Two difficulties in particular face the realization of any plan: the fog of war, which hinders commanders from knowing what is happening , and the all pervasive “friction” where “ facts take place upon which it was impossible to calculate, their origin being chance. As an instance of one such chance, take the weather. Here the fog prevents the enemy from being discovered in time, a battery from firing at the right moment, a report from reaching the general: there , the rain prevents a battalion from arriving, another from reaching in right time, because, instead of three, it had to march perhaps eight hours; the cavalry from charging effectively because it is stuck fast in heavy ground”.^[67]

The Europe of 1914, Richard Evans has written, was still a Christian continent.^[68] But the hereditary faith had been challenged by modern nationalism, which in its original form during the French Revolution of the 1790s launched the first attempt to wipe out Christianity.  Its enemy initially was the dynastic families who reigned, in the case of the Hapsburgs or the Bourbons, by divine right, substituted now for the consent of “the people”, defined by language, by religion, by territory, or by conquest. Nationalism by turn, and in the course of the nineteenth century was challenged by what Friedrich Nietszche identified as “the rise of nihilism”- the body of thinking that states that morality is a fiction, that humans must create their own values as they go along, or that is destructive of everything inherited. ^[69] In 1914, such ideas were definitely abroad:  the allies during the July crisis began to accuse the German authorities of promoting the final crisis, but they did so with the enthusiastic backing, James Joll wrote, of populations cheering for war. None of this would have been possible, he adds,  without the accumulation of factors which contributed to the situation in 1914.^[70] More recent  historiography, points out that the German elites were far from united about seeking war, and as our account above indicates, switched from being adamant to seeking peace and back again. ^[71] But what certainly did weigh on the élites who made the key decisions leading to war was the influence of social Darwinism-the idea in brief that humanity’s laws were dictated by nature, where the powerful imposed their will on the weak, and, in the words of Thucydides, the weak suffered what they must. 

The course of July 1914 was transfixed by more or less evolved fears and expectations about imagined futures: French commentators were mesmerized  by Germany’s economic prowess, and what it spelt for a proximate future. Even more so, when their thoughts turned to demography, where Germany’s expected future expansion was the prime motive behind the 1913 legislation to extend national service from two to three years. Germany’s élites felt very much the same when contemplating Russia’s demographic and economic development, and readily concluded that striking now was advisable, rather than waiting to be dwarfed by the combined weight of the Triple Entente in a few years time. Thinking about the future sucked the German military élite into concocting the Schlieffen Plan, thought up by the German General Staff, under the initial leadership of Alfred Count von Schlieffen, and later modified countless times by his successor, Helmuth von Moltke. The idea was to deal with the problem of a two front war: German would first crush France, then turn on Russia. It was also to deal with the fact that troops could be mobilized and delivered fast by railway transport: whoever got to a place first was supposed to have the advantage. 

The Plan contravened nearly every precept elaborated about war by Clausewitz, notably about its being drenched in unpredictability. The Plan was on paper, so abstract; it tried, for instance,  to define events  on the 42^nd day; it proposed the invasion of neutral Belgium, a neutrality underwritten by international treaty; it failed to see that if time was allocated to implementing a written plan, attention would be distracted from what actually was happening. Not least, its assumption that the French had to be crushed fast encouraged the General Staff to push for an early opening of the war. 

There was a realization among Europe’s leaders that a modern war would be deadly. But the realization was not as widely understood as it could have been. Jan Bloch, for instance, a Polish banker, had written a massive 6 volume tome, entitled Modern Weapons and Modern War in 1890.^[72] The thrust of Bloch’s contention was that “the spade would be as important as the rifle”. Armies would become bogged down in trench warfare; entrenched men would be equipped with machine guns; cavalry charges would be obsolete; attack would be costly, and an advantage would lie with defence; combatant nations would have to mobilise millions; the economic and social costs would be exhorbitant. He tried his best to broadcast his views, and in this spirit he attended the Hague Peace Conference of 1899, where Tsar Nicholas played such a prominent role by his patronage. Countess Bertha von Suttner was also present: she had written a pacifist novel, Die Waffen Nieder,^[73] that had been published in 37 editions and translated into 12 languages. Leo Tolstoy had praised her book; she was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; and became the chairwoman of the German Peace Society.  In 1912, a Hamburg Schoolteacher, Wilhelm Lamszus, published a short 100 page novel, entitled Das Menschenschlachthaus. Bilder vom kommenden Krieg, (The Human Slaughter-House. Scenes from a War That is Sure to Come).^[74] Within three months, the book sold 100,000 copies in Germany, and was followed up by versions in English, French, Finnish, Japanese, Czeck, Danish  and Russian. The idea which prevailed mid-twentieth century that the Europeans went happily  to war is not tenable. 

The pacifists faced strong competition from social darwinists. The locus classicus of this thinking arguably was General Friedrich von Bernardi’s book, Deutschland und der nächste Krieg, that within a year was into its 6^th edition, and into its 9^th edition by 1914 in English.  ^[75] “ War, he writes, is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with, since without it an unhealthy development will follow,  which excludes every advancement of the race, and therefore all real civilization. The  struggle for existence is, in the life of Nature, the basis of all healthy development. All existing things show themselves to be the result of contesting forces. So in the life of man the struggle is not merely the destructive, but the life-giving principle. “To supplant or to be supplanted is the essence of life,” says Goethe, and the strong life gains the upper hand. The law of the stronger holds good everywhere. Those forms survive which are able to procure themselves the most favourable conditions of life, and to assert themselves in the universal economy of Nature. The weaker succumb. This struggle isregulated and restrained by the unconscious sway of biological laws and by the interplay of opposite forces. In the plant world and the animal world this process is worked out in unconscious tragedy. In the human race it is consciously carried out, and regulated by social ordinances. The man of strong will and strong intellect tries by every means to assert himself, the ambitious strive to rise, and in this effort the individual is far from being guided merely by the consciousness of right. The life-work and the  life-struggle of many men are determined, doubtless, by unselfish and ideal motives, but to a far greater extent the less noble passions–craving for possessions, enjoyment and honour,envy and the thirst for revenge–determine men’s actions. Still more often, perhaps, it is the need to live which brings down even natures of a higher mould into the universal struggle for existence and enjoyment. »

Such ideas were widespread in pre-1914 Europe, and undoubtedly infested thinking during the July crisis.  Kaiser Wilhelm was forever expounding about the inevitable coming clash between Germandom and Slavdom, and  entertained contradictory wishes such as a short sharp, local war in the Balkans, while providing Austria-Hungary its “blank cheque”, which almost invited Russia to back Serbia; Conrad von Hötzendorff , philanderer and magnificently moustachioed Chief of the Austrian-Hungarian General Staff, opined that “The basic principle behind all events on earth”, is the struggle for existence. He called for Austria-Hungary to go to war against Serbia 26 times over the course of the period 1913-14. But he knew that the Austro-Hungarian armed forces were not in good shape.  Bethmann Hollweg, the German Chancellor, clearly embraced, writes Fritz Stern,  “the curious blend of contradictory beliefs-social Darwinism, misunderstood romanticism, and cultural pessimism- all pointing to German expansion as the only alternative to stagnation”. ^[76] He wanted to pursue détente with the United Kingdom, but he also favoured the Schlieffen Plan and the invasion of Belgium.  Franz Ferdinand favoured the granting of more rights to minorities in the Dual Monarchy, but that did not exclude his loathing the Hungarians, considering Serbs as pigs, and being hostile to Freemasons, Jews and Liberals. Erich von Falkenhayn, then, Prussian Minister of War, said of his July 27 meeting with the Kaiser and Moltke, that “it has now been decided to fight the matter through regardless of the cost”. ^[77]  von Moltke was on record in 1912 in stating that the sooner war came, the better. ^[78]Possibly the prize for muddled thinking goes to Tsar Nicholas II who went to war in support of a regicide state, with a very questionable reputation as a terrorist organization, in the name of “Slavdom”. 

There can be little doubt that German leaders were not seeking peace, as Sir Edward Grey hoped. Sir Edward Grey was perhaps the only consistent statesman in seeking to revive the Council of Europe mechanism: there was no excuse for continental statesman not knowing the bottom line of British foreign policy that a hostile dominant power should not seize hegemony in Europe. Other statesmen involved in the July crisis  were too often muddle headed: they wanted one thing, and its reverse. Margaret MacMillan is surely correct when she puts the blame in her book, The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, for the start of the First World War on the decision making of the small group of people leading the prime protagonists of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary The place to look in the causes of the outbreak of the First World War was not so much  in the deficiencies of the states: these deficiencies existed, and there were also deficiencies in the Concert of Europe. But the visible defects, that had immediate bearing on the July events,  were in the individuals who led Europe to war. These individuals primarily served dynasts.  “The war, MacMillan writes, had been precipitated not  by popular nationalistic fervour, but by the decisions of tiny groups of individuals in seven governments”. ^[79] In the case of Sir Edward Grey, he failed because neither Vienna nor Berlin thought clearly about the risk or probability of war, given the political constellation of Europe at the time. Max Hastings states, with much reason, that there is vastly more documentary evidence to support the case  that “ German leaders were willing for war in 1914 than exists to sustain any of the alternative scenarios proposed in recent years”.^[80] The chickens for Germany came home to roost in 1918, when Germany’s political system was charged with causing the outbreak of the war. War was the price Europe paid to switch from dynastic regime to national regimes. The one exception, as on entering the war, was Great Britain. 

---

^[1] Tim Butcher, The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War. Vintage Books. 2015. p.196. . 

^[2] Rescript of the Russian Emperor, handed to diplomatic representatives by Count Mouravieff, Russian Foreign Minister, at weekly reception in the Foreign Office, St. Petersburg, August 24/12, 1898. 

^[3]  IBRD, Economic Growth in Sweden Since 1860-1965 compared to growth in Other countries, Economic Department Working Paper No.53. December 31, 1969. 

^[4] Angus Maddison, “Levels of GDP per capita in European Colonial Power and Former Colonies, 1500-1998”, The World Economy: Volume I: A Millenial Perspective, OECD 2006. p.92

^[5] S.B.Saul, « Britain and World Trade”, The Economic History Review, 1954, New Series, Vol.7. No.1. (1954). pp.49-66. 

^[6]   Allan Nevins,  Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage 1932. 633–648

^[7] Charles Mangin, La Force Noire,  Paris, Hachette, 1910.

^[8] James Bryce, First Viscount Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire,  London, Good Press, 2019, 1864, p.2.  

^[9] Ardan Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen and Prussian War Planning, New York, Berg Publishers, 1991, p.309

^[10] Burhop Carsten, « Pharmaceutical Research in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of E. Merck”, Business History Review, Volume 83. Issue 3, 2009. p475-503

^[11] David Fromkin, Europe’s Last Summer: Why the World Went to War in 1914. Heinemann. 2004, p.156. 

^[12] Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, New York, W.W. Norton, 1967 p.54.  

^[13] Fischer,1967, p.55 ; Fromkin, 2004, p.161. 

^[14] « Austro-Hungarian Red Book », American Journal of International Law, 9. (S4), October 1915. pp.309-413. Fromkin, 2004, p.165. 

^[15] Samuel R. Williamson, Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War. St. Martin’s Press. 1991

^[16] Luigi Albertini, Origins of the War of 1914, Vol II, London, Oxford University Press, 1953, p. 168.

^[17] Fromkin, 2004, p. 165. 

^[18] Fromkin, 2004, p.155.

^[19] Quoted in Fromkin, 2004, p. 169. 

^[20] Fischer, 1967, p.58. 

^[21] Fromkin 2004 p.181. 

^[22] Fromkin, 2004, p. 168.

^[23] Fischer 1967, p.58.

^[24] Fischer, 1967, p.64. 

^[25] Fischer, 1967, p. 61. 

^[26] Christopher Clarke, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. London, Penguins, 2013 p.448.

^[27] Fromkin, 2004, p. 196. 

^[28] Fromkin, 2004, p.197. 

^[29] Fromkin, 2004, p.190. 

^[30] Fischer, 1967, p.65. 

^[31] Fromkin, p.197. 

^[32] Clarke, 2013, p.475. 

^[33] Fischer, 1967, p.64. 

^[34] Fromkin, 2004, p.208. 

^[35] Cited in Fromkin, 2004, p.207.

^[36] Fromkin, 2004, p.207. 

^[37] Fromkin, 2004,  p.198. 

^[38] L. C. F. Turner, “The Russian Mobilization in 1914”. Journal of Contemporary History. 3 (1), January 1968, pp. 65–88

^[39] D.C.B. Lieven, “Russia Accepts a General War”. In Holger Herwig (ed)  The Outbreak of World War I : causes and responsibilities (6th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1997.p.108. 

^[40] Fromkin, 2004, p.191. 

^[41] Fromkin, 2004, p.209

^[42] Fischer 1967, p.69. 

^[43] Fromkin 2004, p.219.

^[44] Fromkin, 2004, p. 221. 

^[45] David Allen Butler, The Burden of Guilt: How Germany Shattered the Last Days of Peace, Summer 1914. Casemate. 2010, p.103. . 

^[46] Fischer 1967, p.69. 

^[47] Fromkin, 2004, p.214. 

^[48] Karl Kautsky, ed. (1924). Outbreak of the World War: German Documents. Oxford University Press.924, No. 201, p.210. 

^[49] Fromkin, 2004, p.219. 

^[50] Fischer, 1967,p.73. 

^[51] Fischer, 1967, p.84. 

^[52] Fromkin, 2004, p.226.

^[53] Fromkin, 2004, p.227. 

^[54] Fischer, 1967, p.78. 

^[55] Fischer 1967, p.78. 

^[56] Clarke, 2013, p. 509.

^[57] Fischer, 1967, p.80

^[58] The Willy-Nicky Telegrams. https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Willy-Nicky_Telegrams

^[59]  For the subsequent events, Fromkin, 2004, p. 233-247. . 

^[60] Statement by Sir Edward Grey, Hansard, HC, 03, August 1914, vol.65. pp.1809-32. 

^[61] Albertini, 1953, p. 504.

^[62] Clarke, 2013, p.544. 

^[63] Dominic Lieven, Towards the Flame. Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia, London 2015, p. 313

^[64] Cited by Annika Mombauer, July Crisis 1914, International Encyclopedia of the First World War, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net

^[65] Quoted in Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War, London, Allen Lane 1998, p 32, 195.

^[66] John Keegan, The First World War, London, Pimlico, 1999.p.3. 

^[67] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Volume I, Chapter 7, “Key Ideas on War”. 

^[68] Richard J. Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, London, Penguins, 2017, p. 430.

^[69] James Joll, The Coming of the First World War, An International History, Pelican, 1975, p.168. 

^[70] Ibid.p.169

^[71] Samuel R. Williamson Jr, Ernest R.May, « An Identity of Opinions : Historians and July 1914 », The Journal of Modern History, Vol.79, No. 2, June 2007, pp.335-387. 

^[72]  I.S. Bloch Будущая война и её экономические последствия. This was translated from the Russian, with an introduction by W.T. Stead, Is War now Impossible? Being an Abridgement of “That War of the Future in nits Technical, Economic and Political Relations, London, Grant Richards, 1899.

^[73] Bertha von Suttner, Die Waffen Nieder, Verlag Edgar Pearson, 1889. 

^[74] Wilhelm Lamszus, Das Menschenschlachthaus. Bilder vom kommenden Krieg, Andesite Press, 2016. 

^[75] Germany and the next War, in the online Gutenberg Press, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11352/pg11352.txt

^[76] Fritz Stern, « Bethmann Hollweg and the War: The Limits of Responsibility”, in L.Krieger, F.Stern, eds, The Responsibility of Power, New York, Garden City, 1967, pp.252-85. p.257. 

^[77]  Quoted in Max Hastings, Catastrophe : Europe Goes to War 1914, London, William Collins p.76. 

^[78] Margaret MacMillan, The War that Ended Peace: The Road to War, Toronto, Penguin, p.479. 

^[79] Ibid. p.123.

^[80] Max Hastings, p.32.