The Origins of the World War Vol. 1 - Before Sarajevo (1928).pdf

This is Sidney B. Fay's monumental book The Origins of the World War Vol. 1 - Before Sarajevo (1928) which changed the way people looked at the causes of World War I, by rejecting the idea that it was solely Germany which caused the war and blaming instead the much more broad but 'underlying' causes of the war, namely the system of secret alliances, militarism, nationalism, economic imperialism and the newspaper press. The greatest single underlying cause of the War was the system of secret alliances which developed after the Franco-Prussian War. It gradually divided Europe into two hostile groups of Powers who were increasingly suspicious of one another and who steadily built up greater and greater armies and navies. The Origins of the World War is as pertinent and useful today as it was then. He describes in detail the actions and personalities of the major figures of the day, with frequent quotes from biographies, reports, and above all the huge collections of documents published after the armistice, all of which he seems to have read and absorbed. Anyone trying to understand how the war came about would do much better to work through Fay than to depend on one of the easy-reading journalistic summaries that have come out recently. The author is careful to illustrate that the Germans were far from solely to blame for the War. In fact, their attempts to restrain Austria are contrasted with the French encouragement of Russia. This book appeared in the early 1930's, and it was time for a realistic assessment of the causes of the War. The "war to end all wars" was far from ending anything at all as the same causes descibed inside this fascinating book are still with us. 340 pages. A must read for everyone.

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