The lowes cabinets second is : The Deluge: the Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, by Adam T

So now we come to that distinguished thing, lowes cabinets the one hundredth anniversary of the War that Ended Peace, the Great War, the Apocalypse, the End of Christendom,  the lowes cabinets War that Ended the British Empire or, if you prefer , the Great War for Civilization.
What I write here today has another lowes cabinets purpose, to share with my readers as much as possible the lessons from two excellent and original books on the war and its consequences,  which I have been reading during the past month.
The lowes cabinets second is : The Deluge: the Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, by Adam Tooze, Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Director of International Security Studies at Yale, published by Allen Lane
Professor Tooze s is the bigger and more momentous book, but Professor Newton s is the more passionate and the more iconoclastic. If he is right, much of the standard account of the outbreak of war being touted lowes cabinets about the place this week is seriously wrong.
I find Professor Newton s account of events (which is undoubtedly contentious and has already been attacked by one reviewer) extremely persuasive, lowes cabinets in the light of what I know about the conduct of British politics in modern times.
But while I was reading both books ( and Adam Tooze s is inconveniently lowes cabinets heavy to haul about in a backpack, but I did anyway, so as never to be far from it) I felt I was breathing lowes cabinets the pure, clear mountain air of real, refreshing history. Not justifying, not rehashing, not regurgitating, but boldly telling what the writer feels very strongly is an important truth, a truth which has reached out of the archives and put its thumb in his eye.
Let s begin (I gave a pint of blood at lunchtime, and have an appointment this evening, so I already feel this posting can t be finished off today and is going to have to be in at least two parts) with The Darkest Days .
It s plainly polemical history. Its epigraph, from a 1920 work unknown to me by Vernon lowes cabinets Lee , called Satan the Waster  declares If men are to do and die, for mercy s sake let them question why as thoroughly as possible; else some other men are sure to be required lowes cabinets to do and die as a consequence of this blindness and haste
So I read this work very sympathetically, and I make no doubt about that. He makes it plain he has no wish to exculpate Germany. lowes cabinets This is wise. Germany s responsibility for pushing Austria into a confrontation with Russia, pushing Russia into war, and so bringing about a war Berlin thought it could win, seems to me to be beyond doubt. See this excellent essay by Nigel Jones, rebutting the fashionable over-praise for Christopher Clark s Sleepwalkers , recommended by everyone, which seeks to spread the blame all over the place. Hmph.
Let us first of all dispose of the Naval Arms Race argument, under which Germany lowes cabinets threatened British naval superiority, so we had to destroy them.  You have to look this up to find it out, but the naval race between Britain and Germany was over by 1912, officially declared at an end by German Chancellor Theobald Bethmann Hollweg. This was at least partly because Germany had decisively lost, having been brutally outbuilt and outspent by us.  It was also because Germany needed to build up its armies for the coming two-front war it was planning with France and Russia but mainly with Russia, then as now Germany s real target.  By 1914 Berlin possessed a mere 17 dreadnoughts compared with Britain s 29. The real threat to British naval predominance (which turned out to be real and is now colossally evident) lowes cabinets was already beginning to develop in a quite different place the USA. This subject will come up in detail, when I get on to Adam Tooze s book.
I d be interested to know if anyone can tell me which bit of it, exactly,  commits Britain to go to the aid of Belgium if invaded. It s said, in weaselly tones, that it does so by implication . What it says is that the guarantors (including Britain) have to respect Belgian neutrality. And that Belgium has to maintain it. That s it. (As I ve pointed out here before, Palmerston got out of a much clearer obligation to intervene in Schleswig Holstein in 1864 on the grounds that it wasn t in our interests to do what we d said we d do)   But I can t see why. I could equally well say this it doesn t by implication.  Treaties don t imply. They state. Especially do they state when military obligations are under discussion.  
(And lowes cabinets boy, were military obligations under discussion, but not openly but in secret cabals, behind the backs of Parliament and even most of the Cabinet. Barbara Tuchman writes at some length in The Guns of August about the years of secret conversations between Sir Henry Wilson and Ferdinand Foch about joint Anglo-French military arrangements, down to train timetables, rations and billets. These detailed chats, I should stress, were quite unknown to the Cabinet or Parliament. And, as Pro