Russian Government itself in the very beginning of the diplomatic
conversations that preceded the outbreak of hostilities.

As early as the 24th of July, the Russian Government sought to prevail
upon Great Britain to proclaim its complete solidarity with Russia and
France, and on the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg pointing out
that "direct British interests in Servia were nil, and a war on behalf
of that country would never be sanctioned by British public opinion,"
the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs replied that "we must not
forget that the _general European_ question was involved, the Servian
question being but a part of the former, and that Great Britain
could not afford to efface herself from the problem _now at issue_."
(Despatch of Sir G. Buchanan to Sir E. Grey, 24th July, 1914).

Those problems involved far mightier questions than the relations of
Servia to Austria, the neutrality of Belgium or the wish of Japan to
keep the peace of the East by seizing Kiao-Chau.

The neutrality never became a war issue until long after war had been
decided on and had actually broken out; while Japan came into the
contest solely because Europe had obligingly provided one, and because
one European power preferred, for its own ends, to strengthen an
Asiatic race to seeing a kindred white people it feared grow stronger
in the sun.

Coming then to the five great combatants, we can quickly reduce them
to four. Austria-Hungary and Germany in this war are indivisible.
While each may have varying aims on many points and ambitions that,
perhaps, widely diverge both have one common bond, self-preservation,
that binds them much more closely together than mere formal "allies."