The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #152785 Message #3580384
Posted By: Keith A of Hertford
01-Dec-13 - 08:26 AM
Thread Name: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
Some extracts from a relevant piece in The Guardian.
(I assume Musket has no objections to that publisher)
It predates anything Hastings published on WW1.
"Lloyd George's war memoirs, like the writings of Siegfried Sassoon, belong to the category of "literature of disillusionment". The Goat had thought differently in August 1914. Initially sceptical, he rapidly came to see, like the rest of the cabinet, that Britain was faced by a grave threat to national security. Modern scholarship gives little support to the accidental war thesis. The drafters of the Versailles treaty had it broadly right after all."
"The first world war began for two fundamental reasons. First, decision-makers in Berlin and Vienna chose to pursue a course that they hoped would bring about significant political advantages even if it brought about general war. Second, the governments in the entente states rose to the challenge. At best, Germany and Austria-Hungary launched a reckless gamble that went badly wrong. At worst, 1914 saw a premeditated war of aggression and conquest, a conflict that proved to be far removed from the swift and decisive venture that some had envisaged."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/08/first-world-war-causes-deliberate-accident