Keith
Your arguments here have now become little more than a diversion away from the facts that your whole argument throughout this thread has been sunk without trace by the first BBC programme
Who gives a toss about the inevitability of the war - that has yet to be discussed - it was touched on briefly, but the first statement that was made was that it was a struggle for the domination of Europe by two Imperial powers - full stop - not the jingoistic "Gallant little Belgium" line you were pumping out.
The Mons fiasco was enough to show how well it was conducted and all the Jeremy Paxman quotes in the world don't alter that one iota.
Your claims on the reasons men joined up was scuppered with the way the recruiting campaign was carried out - the appeal for "petticoats for the cowards" - "King and country", "virility", "the savage Hun" as depicted by war profiteer Bottomly's racist shows, bayoneted, breastless women.... all that and more showed the cynicism and dishonest manner in which the men were recruited - they never got round to the white feathers - but that'll come, I have no doubt.
How well it managed to convince the poor buggers who joined up was shown by the recruits who went off to pick blackberries instead of drilling and training.
You called me a liar for inventing the "it'll all over by Christmas" slogan, yet there it was - the poor sods who went off to be slaughtered at Mons setting off for a "short war that'll be all over by Christmas"   
You described the old soldier who told is of his experiences in Europe as "a liar" because his account didn't coincide with your gung-ho image of life in the trenches
We have yet to see if Sassoon Owen, Liddel Harte.... and all the other veterans you have also called "liars and romantics", were also telling the truth in their accounts of their experiences.
Your appalling attempts to sell what has long been recognised as the barbaric death-throes of a dying Empire, as a glorious struggle for freedom against tyranny appears to have fallen at the first fence.
I have no doubt that your behaviour from here on will amount to little more than a face saving exercise on your part to justify the jingoistic crap you have been pumping out over the last few months.
Your reputation here will no doubt take precedence over the memories of the millions who died so that Britannia could continue to "Rule the waves".
You get more and more squalid with every posting you make.
But then again, maybe we're all wrong - maybe you are as "infallible" on World War One as you claim to be on religious persecution and we "swine you cast your pearls before" are all the bunch of idiots you constantly tell us we are.
And all this without ever reading a book - (maybe the Angel of Mons has come back down and touched you with her wand of divinity.
Jim Carroll