Jim,
Margaret McMillan and Max Hastings in particular make actual statements in their books which diametrically oppose tour claims

No they do not.
I have read both. You clearly have not.

Here is Macmillan on a book by Stephenson, which Rag and I both read and discussed.

"Like many of his fellow historians, Stevenson challenges much of the accepted wisdom – for example, that the generals had no ideas about how to break the deadlock – yet the prevalent view of the war remains under the influence of the highly critical literature of the late 1920s and early 1930s, with its emphasis on the horrors of the trenches and its portrayal of a futile struggle for obscure or ignoble ends, managed by inept political leaders and unimaginative generals. How many of us saw Oh! What a Lovely War with a slight sense of superiority to the people of the past, so easily duped?

Stevenson argues persuasively that we must believe that men and women meant what they said when they talked about duty and sacrifice, that they accepted the war, even willingly."

Elsewhere she said,
"The wartime generals were not all cowards and incompetents as Alan Clark argued in his infamous The Donkeys (1961). A new generation of British historians, among others, has done much to explode such lazy generalisation and show that commanders developed both strategies and tactics that, in the end, worked."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7b6f0490-6347-11e3-a87d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2oJ9WwKyd

And,
"Britain certainly thought it had legitimate reasons for going in, and I think it did," she says.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/25/margaret-macmillan-just-dont-ask-me-who-started-war

Macmillan in her own words rubbishes your views on this.
Everything written in the last twenty years does!
That shows beyond reasonable doubt that you are wrong about this.