The British Navy had mobilized in July 1914. By declaring war on August 4th- when Germany invaded Belgium, the Navy could immediately implement its battle plan- i.e. establish blockade, hunt down & sink German ships & seize battle ships being built in the UK for foreign powers. Speed was of the essence. The UK needed to start applying pressure on Germany immediately. Moreover, by putting 'boots on the ground' in Belgium, the UK was sending a strong signal that it interpreted its treaty obligations to involve not just 'thoughts & prayers', but the commitment of vast armies & armadas.
Once Belgium's neutrality was violated, there was nothing to be gained by delaying matters. If the British army didn't put up a big fight now, no one would believe it could do so at some later point. Thus Britain had an 'offensive doctrine'. Sadly, the French didn't. That's why the war was fought on their soil.
The other point has to do with the way in which war-aims change & become more extreme after war has been declared. One might say this is irrational or the 'sunk-cost fallacy' but fighting spirit is an important factor in deciding the outcome of battles. The war-aims of both sides tended to become more 'maximal' as the war progressed. From the game-theory point of view, the 'pay-off matrix' changes in the manner of a drug addict who wants more of the very thing which is ruining his life.
Consider the September memorandum of Bethman Hollweg- the German Chancellor. We already see an expansion in war-aims & the increased infeasibility of a negotiated peace. War acquires a momentum of its own partly because it is a 'discovery process' but also because it is the political equivalent of crack cocaine.
Berlin, September 9, 1914
1. France. The military authorities are to judge whether the annexation of Belfort, the western
slopes of the Vosges, the demolition of the fortresses, and the annexation of the coastline from
Dunkirk to Boulogne is to be demanded.
In other words, the Royal Navy would be tied up in the North Sea & Channel. This meant that its ability to defend the Empire would dwindle.
In all events, because it is necessary for our industry’s iron-ore production, the basin of Briey is
to be annexed.
Furthermore, a war indemnity, to be paid in installments. It is to be so high that France will be
unable in the next 18 to 20 years to expend major sums on armaments.
In addition: a commercial treaty that makes France economically dependent on Germany,
transforms it into our export market, and enables it to exclude English commerce from France.
& Europe in general. England would face economic decline.
This commercial treaty must secure financial and industrial freedom of movement for us in
France – so German firms can no longer be treated differently from French firms.
Thus suggests that Germany didn't think it could take over the whole country. The Battle of Marne had begun some three days earlier. The British Expeditionary force had proved very effective though it had been forced to pull back after the failed Battle of Mons.
2. Belgium. Incorporation of Liege and Verviers into Prussia, a border strip of the Belgian
province of Luxembourg to the Kingdom Luxembourg.
It remains questionable whether Antwerp, along with an access route to Liege, is also to be
annexed.
Whatever the case, Belgium must in all events – even should it continue to exist as a state –
sink to the status of a vassal state; it must cede occupation rights in militarily significant ports;
place its coasts at our disposal; become economically a German province. Given such a
solution, which has the advantages of annexation without the domestic political disadvantages,
Fr[ench] Flanders, along with Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne, with their largely Flemish population, can be handed over, as is, to Belgium without any danger.
Belgium was highly industrialized. Germany's economic heft would greatly increase.
The competent agencies
will have to evaluate the military value of this position vis-à-vis England.
3. Luxembourg. Will become a German federal state and will receive a strip from the present
Belgian province of Luxembourg and possibly the corner of Longwy.
4. A central European economic association is to be constructed through common customs
agreements, to comprise France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Poland (!) and
possibly Italy, Sweden, and Norway.
So the UK would be frozen out of a rapidly expanding market.
This association will probably have no common
constitutional head and will provide for ostensible equality among its members, although it will in
fact be under German leadership; it must stabilize Germany’s economic predominance in
central Europe.
5.
If the Germans took Holland, they would also gain Indonesia. If France was under their thumb, they would be predominant in Indo-China & a big chunk of Africa. Britain's position in the Mediterranean would be undermined.
The question of colonial acquisitions, above all the creation of a contiguous central African
colonial empire, will be considered later; so will the question of German goals vis-à-vis Russia.
As the foundation for economic arrangements with France and Belgium, a short, provisional
formula for a possible preliminary peace is to be found.
6. Holland. Means and measures should be considered by which Holland can be brought into
closer association with the German Empire.
In view of the Dutch character, this closer association must be free of any sense of coercion; it
must not alter the Dutch way of life, nor change Dutch military obligations. It will thus leave
Holland ostensibly independent but in fact dependent upon us. Perhaps an alliance that extends
to the colonies, in any case a close customs union, possibly the incorporation of Antwerp into
Holland might be considered, in return for their granting Germany the right to keep troops in the
fortress of Antwerp as well as at the mouth of the Schelde.
This was the dagger aimed at Britain's heart. The UK had no choice but to go to war- that too sooner rather than later.
Niall Ferguson disagrees. In an interview with BBC History he was asked-
Why do you think Britain decided to join the war?
This is a hotly contested subject. If one looks at what the prime minister, Herbert Asquith and other ministers (including, of course, foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey) said in August 1914, then the answer is Belgium. This was the casus belli most often cited.
Who was against it? Only some Socialists- John Burns & Ramsay MacDonald- a couple of Liberal toffs (Trevelyan & Ponsonby)- some Quakers etc. Morley was the biggest gun to quit because of his distaste for fighting on the same side as the Tzar. But what was decisive was Lloyd George's support. After Belgium was invaded he was fully on side. Thus, we can safely say that Belgium was the casus belli.
The private deliberations of the government suggest, however, that Britain was doing more than just upholding the 1839 treaty that guaranteed Belgium’s neutrality. In the minds of Asquith, Grey and Winston Churchill (then first lord of the Admiralty) Britain could not stand by and watch France defeated if it meant German dominance of the European continent and the Channel ports.
This was the correct view. If Britain held aloof (which would have pleased those who loathed the Tzarist regime) its security would be compromised & it economic position would decline. It needed to get into the War quickly so as to have more bargaining chips in case of a negotiated peace.
Belgium provided a good legal basis for intervention and one that was also popular because the great British public, especially liberals, quickly appreciated the idea that Britain was standing up for a little country that was being invaded.
The fact that it was little didn't matter. What mattered was that England could be invaded from its ports.
However, in practice, the strategic calculation about the balance of power in Europe was the more important one.
Europe could go fuck itself. The Brits were worried about being invaded. Popular novels of the period had painted a vivid picture of the German threat to the home islands.
There was another part to this story, though, that doesn’t make it into most history books. The Liberal government on 2 August 1914 realised that if it did not go to war then it would fall from power, because Grey and Churchill would resign and Asquith would have felt obliged to go to the king and admit the government could not be continued.
Morley & Trevelyan resigned. They weren't missed.
This was not a pleasant prospect for the ministers sitting around the government table.
If the Liberals split over the War, there would be an election & a Tory landslide.
The majority of people around the cabinet table did not want war. They did not share Grey’s view that France had to be supported. They were desperately hoping that Lloyd George, the chancellor of the exchequer, would oppose intervention. But when they realised that if they didn’t act, the government would fall and the Conservatives would get in, they quietly lined up behind Grey, Churchill and Asquith.
Lloyd George knew that the the English were paranoid about an invasion from the Continent because that's where those fuckers had themselves come from. The Celts might not care but they didn't have the numbers.
Was Britain’s intervention in August 1914 crucial to the outcome?
Yes. The Brits pretty much starved Germany into submission. Their Naval embargo was very effective.
Without British involvement, could Germany have defeated France?
Yes. The French were internally divided in both wars and thus had a rubbish offensive doctrine. French politics was much more corrupt, factionalized, & frankly shit compared to England. Take the case of Joseph Caillaux whose mistress shot a Newspaper editor. Did he also take money from the Germans during the Great War? Perhaps. The good news is that this one time Prime Minister was never accused of molesting sheep.
I think that Britain’s intervention was crucial. Although Britain only had seven divisions ready in 1914, its financial resources and huge potential power were also being made available. The knowledge that they had the resources of the British empire on their side was a pretty important source of comfort for the French, who were horribly mauled in the opening six months of the war. Half a million French soldiers were killed, permanently incapacitated or taken prisoner in this time, and under other circumstances it would have been highly likely that French resistance would have crumbled, as it did in 1870 and would again in 1940.
There were 400,000 British soldiers in France in 1940. I suppose the truth is plenty of French people preferred Hitler to Bloch (who was Jewish).
The fact that the French did not collapse in, let’s say, 1915 or 1916
was because Germany had to divert troops to its East. Hitler had a pact with Stalin. I believe the French had spent a lot of money on bribes in St. Petersburg to prevent a deal between the Tzar & the Kaiser.
surely can be explained by the knowledge that British support would grow in strength and, of course, by 1916 Britain had sufficient manpower in France to mount the Somme offensive and take some of the strain off the French army.
Then Russia capitulated. I think the British embargo was crucial in preventing Ludendorff's big push from succeeding.
Could Britain have lived with the consequences of defeat for France and Russia?
Yes. But it would decline more rapidly than if it dug its heels in. Smart people would emigrate.
The most controversial part of my book – and I think it is an argument that will go on until the day I die – was that Britain could indeed have lived with a German victory. What’s more, it would have been in Britain’s interests to stay out in 1914.
How? If Germany had the freedom of the seas, it could effectively take over the French & Dutch navies & merchant marines. It could force the Royal Navy to concentrate ships in the Channel & North Sea while gaining more coaling stations & ports on distant oceans. Italy was already part of the Triple Alliance. If Britain stayed out, they would have had no incentive to join the Entente. On the other hand, declaring war did mean that two battleships being constructed for the Turks were taken over by the Royal Navy. At the margin, this pushed Turkey into entering the war.
What are the arguments against that? If you think that Germany was a dreadful tyranny ruled by the Kaiser and militaristic Junkers [members of Prussia’s landed nobility] , then a German victory in, say, 1916 would have been as bad as a German victory was in 1939/40.
By late 1916, Germany had committed to the maximalist Hindenburg program involving annexation, ethnic cleaning & widespread use of slave labour from conquered territory. Don't forget Ludendorff was the leader of the 1924 Beerhall putsch. Had he not been completely crazy, he- not Hitler (who had been brought into politics by the Army)- would have pushed through the Nazi plan as Chancellor while Hindenburg presided as President.
Incidentally, Ernst Lissauer, published the 'hymn of hate' in August 1914. It was distributed by the State to schools. It said "We will never forego our hate. We have all but a single hate, We love as one, we hate as one. We have one foe and one alone—ENGLAND!"
Why did the Germans think this way? The answer is they had the example of Napoleon before them. A 'Continental system' would fail if the UK remained impregnable because of its Navy. It could bide its time & wait & watch for its opportunity.
But I don’t think that that is plausible and I tried to show in the book that the Germany of 1914 was very different indeed from the Germany of 1939.
Over the course of the War it became what it would be in 1939. Hindenburg & Ludendorff had created a monster which they themselves were too senile or crazy to control. The Kaiser had been bypassed. Germany had to wait for a Fuhrer to take the final step. Thankfully, he was as stupid as shit.
It was, for example, more democratic than Britain in the franchise to the Reichstag;
The franchise was irrelevant. What mattered was whether the Monarch chose the Chancellor or the Legislature was supreme because it imposed a Prime Minister on the Monarch. Queen Victoria had lost that prerogative back in the 1830s. Her German grandson retained it.
it was a state with a firmly established rule of law;
not as firmly established as the UK.
a state with the biggest
most divided
socialist party in Europe and so on. It was a very different kind of threat from the Germany of 1939.
But it became exactly that once it embraced the Hindenburg program.
The second point that my critics have often made is that Britain could not historically tolerate a hegemonic power on the European continent.
Joseph Chamberlain might have been prepared to do so. He offered an alliance to the Germans- though he had no authority to do so- around 1898. But it was a European leader who dreamed of becoming the new Napoleon who could not tolerate British naval hegemony because the 'Continental blockades' don't work because Europe is small relative to the rest of the world. So long as the England was supreme at sea, it could bide its time.
One of the axioms of British foreign policy, they argue, had always been to stop such a dominant power existing – particularly to prevent a single European power controlling not just France and Germany but also Belgium and potentially the Netherlands. In other words it was about the Channel ports and Britain’s security.
D'uh! During the Twenties & Thirties there was some notion that maybe air-power was sufficient. It turned out it was necessary but not sufficient.
That argument, which is very seductive, has one massive flaw in it, which is that Britain tolerated exactly that situation happening when Napoleon overran the European continent, and did not immediately send land forces to Europe.
It waited & watched & spent money like water. Between 1793 and 1814, Great Britain provided approximately £46.3 million in cash subsidies and millions more in equipment to coalition allies to combat Napoleon.
It wasn’t until the Peninsular War that Britain actually deployed ground forces against Napoleon. So strategically, if Britain had not gone to war in 1914, it would still have had the option to intervene later,
Unless the Germans knew the history of the Napoleonic wars & thus would use Belgian ports to launch an invasion. In other words, the UK had a choice. It could wait & let Germany declare war when it was ready or it could take the fight to the enemy & start the slow business of starving the sausage eaters into submission.
just as it had the option to intervene after the Revolutionary Wars had been under way for some time.
Britain had declared war in 1803. Why didn't it send in troops earlier? It was too weak. By contrast, in 1914, it had a pretty respectable Expeditionary Force. The war wasn't expected to last very long. Could the vast populations of India & British Africa be mobilized for the war effort? Up to a point. But it was the Brits who did most of the fighting. They lost over 700,000 out of an Empire total of 900,000.
This is an important distinction that people often miss. Historically it was very remarkable that Britain intervened as early as it did
Nope. As a naval power, it was in its interest to declare war quickly & start grinding down the enemy. It could have postponed 'putting boots on the ground' but Belgium was simply too important to home island defence.
and especially remarkable that it sent land forces immediately on the outbreak of the war.
It needed to be sure that Haldane's reforms were effective. Moreover, there was genuine enthusiasm for 'joining up'. Military johnnies get the prettiest girls.
In fact, doing this was a terrifically expensive thing because, being unprepared for a large-scale land war, Britain had to learn land warfare on the job.
Everyone had to learn trench warfare on the job.
Creating an army more or less from scratch and then sending it into combat against the Germans was a recipe for disastrous losses.
No. France's shitty offensive doctrine was that recipe. It must be said, the Brits did have some shitty generals.
And if one asks whether this was the best way for Britain to deal with the challenge posed by imperial Germany, my answer is ‘no’.
Ostriches don't really bury their heads in the sand. They would have gone extinct if they did. All we can say is that declaring war was good. Some campaigns were fucking horrible- including Gallipoli & Kut el Amara & the utter balls up in East Africa.
The right way for Britain to proceed was not to rush into a land war
in which case the Germans take Normandy. Invasion becomes more & more feasible.
but rather to exploit its massive advantages at sea
there were none if Germany had the freedom of the Seas. Thus war had to be declared. But war is a double edged sword. It means invasion is more likely.
and in financial terms. Even if Germany had defeated France and Russia,
In 1914, few thought Russia could be defeated. The French expected a Russian 'steam-roller'. Indeed, they made a good start by opening a second front in East Prussia. But they bungled things badly & essentially defeated themselves.
it would have had a pretty massive challenge on its hands trying to run the new German-dominated Europe, and would have remained significantly weaker than the British empire in naval and financial terms.
Why did UK give up 'splendid isolation'? The answer is Imperial overreach or the ' Thucydides Trap'. British intelligence knew that the German Crown Prince was in touch with Indian revolutionaries. There were still plenty of disaffected Boers in South Africa. Fenians in Ireland too were biding their time. But, the reason for the Anglo-Japanese alliance in 1902 was worries about Russia. My point is that the UK had beef even with its allies. Neutrality means everybody can gang up on you. Declare war and establish your threat point. Also, don't fight on your own soil. Do it as far away from home as you can.
Given the resources that Britain had available in 1914, a better strategy would have been to wait and deal with the German challenge later when
German could kick the shit out of us.
Britain could respond on its own terms,
by having the shit kicked out of it and whimpering piteously
taking advantage of its much greater naval and financial capability.
which is what would get the Germans angry enough to expend blood & treasure on kicking the shit out of us. Don't forget the first Zeppelin raids on the East Coast began in January 1915. By March, London was being bombed.
What about the moral dimension – did Britain have a duty to get involved in the First World War?
Yes. It had signed a treaty & had the means to make good. If it failed to do so, no treaty it put its name to would have been worth the paper it was printed on.
It had a legal obligation under the 1839 treaty to uphold Belgian neutrality, so would have had to renege on that commitment. But guess what? Realism in foreign policy has a long and distinguished tradition, not least in Britain – otherwise the French would never complain about ‘perfidious Albion’.
Why did the British King not want to ally with a bunch of thugs who had killed their sovereign?
For Britain it would ultimately have been far better to have thought in terms of the national interest rather than in terms of a dated treaty.
The national interest was not to get invaded. The plain fact is the UK won the war. It controlled more territory in 1919 than it did in 1914. Its main rival had been crushed. It had nothing to fear from Germany, which was prostrate, or Russia which was embroiled in Civil War. Then, the US went back to isolation. People said 'only 5 kings are left in Europe. The King of Hearts, the King of Spades, The King of Clubs, the King of Diamonds & the British King Emperor.'
The cost, let me emphasise, of the First World War to Britain was catastrophic
No. It won. The Kaiser & the Tzar & the Hapsburgs & Ottomans had disappeared. Their realms continued to suffer one way or another. Britain lost a lot of its young men but, there's was a glorious dulce et decorum death. The Brits had shown they weren't just a great naval power. They were great soldiers with unbeatable morale & esprit de corps. Moreover, the Brits were actually better than the Germans in creating a 'command' economy capable of mobilisation for total war. Remarkably, they did this without sacrificing very much in the way of civil liberties.
One may certainly say 'Wars are nasty! Boo to war!' but the fact is, winning a war is thrilling. Being the 'last man standing' means you can extort money from all sorts of places which were previously off limits. The mistakes Britain made had to do with industrial & manpower policy. No doubt, military officers studying the Great War can point to all sorts of tactical blunders or strategic miscalculations. But that is a matter for specialists.
and it left the British Empire at the end of it all in a much weakened state.
It was stronger than ever- though it did have to give up Southern Ireland & grant a sort of cosmetic independence to Egypt & Afghanistan. It could be argued that British might meant it had a sort of 'exorbitant privilege' which made it less urgent to raise productivity in the home island. The interwar period could be called ' a golden afternoon of decreasing effort & increasing rewards' for quite a substantial portion of the British population. For the Germans & Russians & so forth, it was a fucking nightmare.
True, the empire had grown territorially, but its financial position was fundamentally altered.
Owing money isn't a bad thing in itself. Britain's being 'too big to fail' helped bring the US into the War.
It had accumulated a vast debt, the cost of which really limited Britain’s military capability throughout the interwar period.
The Brits wanted a couple of shillings off income tax- i.e. a tax rate of 20 not 30 percent. That's what they got because they won the fucking war mate.
Niall seems to think countries should have lots of money & lots of military capability but never use either. The ideal Prime Minister would be Ebenezer Scrooge.
Then there was the manpower loss – not just all those aristocratic officers but the many, many, many skilled workers who died or were permanently incapacitated in the war.
Niall thinks it a shame that soldiers get shot. Why can't they have tickle fights instead?
Arguments about honour, of course, resonate today as they resonated in 1914
Nope. There was an invasion scare. 'The Invasion of 1910' (published in 1906) by William Le Queux sold a million copies and was serialized in the Daily Mail. The Board Schools had ensured that the British working class knew all about the danger posed to the country from Belgian ports if they came under German control.
but you can pay too high a price for upholding that notion of honour,
Britain paid quite a high, but not ruinous, price for ending German & Russian threats to itself for 20 years. France had been bled dry. The US was focused on itself. The British lion roared as never before. This may not have obvious to stay-at-home Englishmen. But it hit you in the face east of Aden.
and I think in the end Britain did.
What was the alternative? Dishonour plus dwindling power & economic prospects.
Let me put it a different way. If it was the right thing to intervene in 1914 with an immediate deployment of ground forces, why did the government not introduce conscription in the years before the confrontation with Germany?
Because they were enough volunteers. Also, people thought the Russian 'steam-roller' would take the pressure off the Western front.
It was absurd to have a commitment to Belgium that could only be honoured with a handful of divisions.
It was absurd to think anything more could be re-supplied. The fact is the Belgians viewed both the UK & France with suspicion. If they had given free passage to the Germans, Britain would not have had the legal authority to send troops. 'Gallant' Belgium did the right thing. Why? The alternative was to become a German vassal or else, if the Entente won, losing territory to France.
The problem about British policy in 1914 is that it was neither one thing nor another.
It was one and only one thing- viz. going to war & delaying the German advance while hoping the Russian steam-roller would terminate the war.
It was not a credible continental commitment, which would have required conscription and a much larger land army.
Yet, it did the job. The Germans were slowed down & ultimately, the embargo took its toll. I suppose, if the Tories had been in power they might have acceded to Lord Roberts' National Service League (founded in 1902) for conscription on the Continental pattern. Dissenters & Liberals tended to be suspicious of such calls as were Socialists.
Nor was it a clearly thought-through maritime strategy to deal with the possibility of a German victory over France and Russia.
The maritime strategy was to sink enemy ships & prevent the enemy getting stuff. Naval chappies can be distressingly literal in their approach to war. Niall would have had them think very deep thoughts abut
The whole point of The Pity of War is to say that it was a grave pity that Britain in 1914 had this mixed-up hybrid strategy.
Which worked. It won. Niall's strategy would have been to stick his head in the sand.
If we had clearly chosen a continental commitment with conscription in the years before 1914
i.e. we had done what 'Bobs' wanted
we might have avoided the war altogether because we’d have deterred the Germans.
Nope. Only if the Belgians had accepted British troops on their German border would there have been deterrence. Scratch that. If Britain had a stronger Army, Germany would have conciliated Russia
But we didn’t deter the Germans, as with only six or seven divisions to deploy against them we didn’t seem to constitute a fatal threat to their war plans.
& yet we actually were very fucking fatal to them.
Should Britain today feel pride for its actions in the First World War, or should it feel shame?
Pride. British people of all classes & both sexes showed their courage, patriotism, strength & ingenuity. The pay-off was a profound political & social revolution such that universal adult suffrage was achieved & the working class of the country could take the lead in its Governance.
Pride and shame are not feelings that an academic historian wants to arouse in readers or television viewers. My aim is to improve our understanding. We need to, of course, feel sympathy for the men like my grandfather who fought in the First World War, because their sufferings were scarcely imaginable.
The British Army learned a lot from the Great War. Casualties were much lower in the Second World War. It must be said, there had been even worse bungling in previous military campaigns.
The death toll, which was greater than the Second World War, was the most painful thing that Britain has ever experienced in war.
Only because this country doesn't start shit it can't finish.
But we should also feel dismay that the leaders, not just of Britain, but of the European states, could have taken decisions that led to such an appalling slaughter.
Blame the Kaiser by all means.
In the end the war was a bizarre battle between
cousins?
empires within western civilisation – it was a kind of European or western civil war.
No. It was like the Napoleonic Wars. The big issue was nascent Nationalism. Was it compatible with multi-ethnic Empires? The answer was no.
When you ask yourself what it was for,
getting rid of Emperors & multi-ethnic Empires
answers like the creation of a pan-Slav state in the Balkans
Yugoslavia? That didn't last.
or the upholding of Belgian neutrality seem ludicrously small compared with the cost in terms of human life and treasure.
Everything seems ludicrously compared to the cost to me of stubbing my fucking toe.
So I feel a sense of sorrow that 10 million people (more by some estimates) died prematurely and often violently because the statesmen of the European empires gambled on war for really quite low stakes.
Africans & Asians were laughing their fucking heads off. Europe shat the bed big time. Whitey dun fucked himself.
My grandfather, who survived the war (albeit having been gassed and shot through the chest), was given a medal that said he’d fought in “the great war for civilisation”.
as opposed to the great war for more haggis.
When you think about that, it’s somewhat absurd because in terms of civilisation the differences between Britain and Germany in 1914 were vanishingly small.
Germany violated Belgium's neutrality. Britain spent blood & treasure seeking to restore it. I suppose, there may be a Hamish Saunderson who is not very different from Niall Ferguson. Yet if Hamish beats & sodomises Niall, we would say his behaviour was uncivilized. We would be justified in using force to compel Hamish to get his dick out out of Niall's bunghole.
To say that it was for civilisation that the great European powers spent four and a quarter years slaughtering young men would almost be comical if it wasn’t so tragic.
There was a 'struggle for mastery' in Europe. The Germans lost. Boo fucking hoo.
So I think we need to look back on this centenary not with pride, not with shame, but with understanding, with sympathy for those who lost their lives or otherwise suffered.
But, if we think Britain shouldn't have put 'boots on the ground' in 1914 then we have fundamentally misunderstood military & diplomatic strategy. If a country shows that it interprets treaties to mean giving 'emotional support', then it has no allies If it has to fight, it will do so alone. Collective security is out of the window. But so are strategic partnerships of various types. There is much greater Knightian Uncertainty. This disproportionately affects open economy with high 'invisible' exports.
Above all, I think we need to look back with a kind of sorrow that such dreadful decision-making could produce such a calamity.
There was a 'discovery' process. Mistakes were bound to happen. But the decision to put boots on the ground in Belgium was the right one. A trading nation was showing its word was its bond. Deep pockets aren't enough. You need to show you can kick ass otherwise your pockets get picked.
Finally, I really hope we can learn something from this.
Don't break treaties or contracts. The Kaiser did. Hitler did. Where are they now? Britain, meanwhile, is still head of a vast Commonwealth. It is a permanent member of the Security Council. One could certainly criticize its economic policies. But that is a matter of preferences. The fact is the Brits showed enthusiasm for the War. Even when things turned ugly, they showed true grit. Then they won & moved in the direction of decolonization and social democracy. Some may deplore this. But it is what the British people, as a whole wanted.
We’re not going to learn anything if all we do in this centenary is say it was all the fault of the Germans.
What fault can be found with the Brits? Did they start a war they were bound to lose? No. Still, the decline of their ruling class was somewhat accelerated. That was not necessarily a bad thing.
That represents a complete failure to progress.
Progress would be about having a better Structural Causal Model which better, or more parsimoniously, fits available data sets.
To me it’s depressing that books are still being produced churning out this kind of line when so much has been written in the last 100 years to create a much more nuanced account.
Where's the fucking nuance in what Niall has written? We get that his gramps had a bad time during the Great War. But at least he didn't have to fight the enemy on his own soil. He crossed the Channel to stick it to the Krauts while his wife & wee bairns remained safe.
The hope I have is that this television film will reignite interest in the book The Pity of War and encourage people to realise that we should not think of this as some great victory or dreadful crime, but more as the biggest error in modern history.
What was the error? The answer is that the British should have moved their island somewhere far away from those nasty Huns. Personally, I blame Asquith. Montague came to him & said 'Boss, I've found a nice stretch of the Pacific where we can relocate.' Asquith- who was fucking Montague's wife- refused to even consider it. Why? It's because he feared delays in shipments of 'French ticklers' from Paris. But for Asquith's lust, Niall's gramps wouldn't have suffered so much. Sad.
