The war was, in truth, inevitable, and was made inevitable years ago.
It was not brought about through the faults or temper of Sovereigns
or their diplomats, not because there were great armies in Europe,
but because certain Powers, and one Power in particular, nourished
ambitions and asserted claims that involved not only ever increasing
armaments but insured ever increasing animosities. In these cases
peace, if permitted, would have dissipated the ambitions and upset
claims, so it was only a question of time and opportunity when those
whose aims required war would find occasion to bring it about.

As Mr. Bernard Shaw put it, in a recent letter to the press: "After
having done all in our power to render war inevitable it is no use now
to beg people not to make a disturbance, but to come to London to be
kindly but firmly spoken to by Sir Edward Grey."

To find the motive powerful enough to have plunged all Europe into war
in the short space of a few hours, we must seek it, not in the pages
of a "white paper" covering a period of only fifteen days (July 20th
to August 4th, 1914), but in the long anterior activities that led the
great Powers of Europe into definite commitments to each other. For
the purposes of this investigation we can eliminate at once three of
the actual combatants, as being merely "accessories after the fact,"
viz.:--Servia, Belgium and Japan, and confine our study of the
causes of the conflict to the aims and motives of the five principal
combatants. For it is clear that in the quarrel between Servia and
Austria, Hungary is only a side issue of the larger question that
divides Europe into armed camps. Were categoric proof sought of how
small a part the quarrel between Vienna and Belgrade played in the
larger tragedy, it can be found in the urgent insistence of the