their differences. Then Britain would have been
isolated in the world. British policy was too com-
promised to allow Grey, in the summer of 1914,
a strong mediating role. But, given German war
plans and the small size of the British army at the
outset, the hope that London might influence
decisively the course of events in Europe during
July 1914 was an illusion anyway.
Nowhere were domestic political considera-
tions the decisive influence. The war was about
national power, and ambitions, and also fears as to
how national power would in the future be exer-
cised. Russia was not satisfied with its already huge
empire. France was conscious of its secondary
status in Europe which, if it were left without an
ally, would leave it at Germany’s mercy. Austria-
Hungary wished to annihilate Slav hostility
beyond its frontiers. For imperial Germany, a
future in which its military power was no longer
superior to the combined military forces of its
potential enemies was not to be tolerated. This
had to be averted by diplomacy or so-called ‘pre-
ventive’ war. Germany’s own diplomacy had con-
tributed much to the French and British feelings
of insecurity. It had finally placed Germany in the
unenviable position of being on bad relations with
its neighbours in the East and the West. The
working out of the Schlieffen Plan saddled it with
the guilt of violating a small neutral state and with
the necessity to strike the first blow, for it was
Germany who had to declare war in order to keep
to the timetable of the famous war plan. What the
coming of the war in 1914 reveals is how a loss
of confidence and fears for the future can be as
dangerous to peace as the naked spirit of aggres-
sion that was to be the cause of the Second World
War a quarter of a century later. A handful of
European leaders in 1914 conceived national rela-
tionships crudely in terms of power and conflict,
and the future in terms of a struggle for survival
in competition for the world. For this, millions
had to suffer and die.
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