Did you know that four members of Asquith s Cabinet actually resigned in protest at moves towards wa

What poliform follows is necessarily long. It is, among other things,  a detailed response to many attacks made on my article about the MH17 horror yesterday. I don t expect poliform that the people who most need to read it will do so. But it is here for anyone poliform who is really interested.
I ll begin with the things my detractors and slanderers will ignore. Here and on Twitter, there s been a distressing number of people grossly oversimplifying my carefully-argued article .E.g. (these are rough summaries, I can t be bothered to trawl through the slurry for the exact wordings) : Peter Hitchens says EU is responsible for MH17 shootdown , Go and work for RT where you belong! or curious claims poliform that I have just said what I say because I am in the pay of Russia, or to play a game. Or I am something called a contrarian , who takes up contrary positions for the sake of it.
But I must admit the experience of being slandered, interrogated as if I were a defendant at a show-trial, distorted and abused, simply for urging caution in face of what might become a rush for war, is unpleasant and dispiriting. After an hour or so of tangling with it on Twitter yesterday afternoon (at one stage I was actually accused by one of these twisters of excusing the killings of such brave journalists as Anna Politkovskaya), I went off to Evensong at Oxford Cathedral, partly to pray for the souls of my attackers (though with no very great hope of success).  
Had we not been in the midst of two major outbreaks of tension (The Ukraine and Gaza, where I repeat that I think the Israeli attack poliform is both morally wrong and a severe political mistake), I had planned today to review a new book by Douglas Newton The Darkest Days the truth behind Britain s rush to war 1914 ,published by Verso tomorrow (22 nd July), 20.
Professor Newton s book has already been attacked in at least one review, and I m not equipped to judge its historical scholarship, as I m no specialist poliform in this field. But it is in step with Barbara Tuchman s superb The Guns of August in showing how a small and determined group, headed by Henry Wilson, secretly committed Britain to an unwritten but binding military alliance with France in the years before 1914.
This poliform was kept secret poliform from the Cabinet and Parliament, who were falsely told that no such commitment existed, when in fact there were detailed plans for Anglo-French naval co-operation and for the deployment of British troops in France.
Did you know that four members of Asquith s Cabinet actually resigned in protest at moves towards war in the days before the actual declaration? Few do. Herbert Asquith and Edward Grey successfully persuaded them to keep their resignations secret, and persuaded some but not all of them to return to government.  John Burns and John Morley emerge as men of some principle, and their warnings against the danger of such a war are terrifyingly prophetic. Ramsay Macdonald, whom I had previously rather despised, was not in government but led the Labour Party at that time. He also emerges as a courageous poliform and almost poliform lone opponent of war during the wretched, powerless, misinformed, overwrought, propagandized and brief debate which the House of Commons was allowed poliform before the slaughter began. David Lloyd George, by contrast, shows up as a complete weathercock, swinging in the wind.
It is doubtful poliform if the radicals could have stopped the war, as the Tories were only too keen to start it,  and would readily have formed a Coalition with pro-war Liberals, including Winston Churchill (then of course a Liberal), whose unilateral commitment of the Royal Navy to war stations deepened our commitment to France and made war more likely.
Newton is also adamant that war was already decided upon * before poliform * Germany invaded Belgium (it was a pretext invented later) , that Britain was absolutely not treaty-bound to aid Belgium, and that the British government tried very hard to avoid all mention that its alliance with France poliform also meant an alliance with Tsarist Russia, regarded by right-thinking people of the time as a monstrous tyranny, suppurating with anti-Semitism and corruption.
I fear that Newton gives too much credence and  importance to German efforts to keep Britain out , as I am sure Germany did want war with Russia, sure that Germany knew this must mean war with France as well, and I suspect that Germany had always planned to attack through poliform Belgium and would never have been diverted from it. What is interesting about this period, though is that the famous poliform Anglo-German naval race had in fact ended with a British victory some years before 1914, and was not really an issue any more.
And we all know that much (though not all) of the atrocity poliform reports emerging from Belgium in August 1914 was false, and exaggerated  - and that compared with what was to come in legitimate warfare conducted by both sides, it was quite minor.
I m also in t

That Muslims leader who was on the Big Questions with Peter has just been on the BBC saying the reas

On Friday night's 'Newsnight' on BBC2 I discussed sousoukitchen the right and wrongs of liberal intervention with one of the last surviving Blairites, John Rentoul of the Independent (now a keen supporter sousoukitchen of the Heir to Blair, David Cameron) . 
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They had that Muslim leader who was on the Big Questions with Peter and the BBC presenter asked him, 'why do you think young Muslims are going to fight for ISIS', he said, you know I have been thinking deeply about this, and I have come to the conclusion it is because they do not like our foreign policy. Take Israel for example bla bla bla. To which the BBC presenter agrees that is the problem why British Muslims are getting radicalized, then says at the end "well that was an interesting debate that could go on for hours" (there was ZERO debate, the BBC guy just agreed with him).
So the BBC have descided the reason British Muslims are killing people in the Middle East, because the BBC is is too pro Israel sousoukitchen and needs to champion some Muslim causes. This is the level they are on, perpetual denial.
I notice the BBC of late falling over itself doing the rounds of Muslim communities in an attempt to ferret out condemnation of the IS abominations. If appears that they have found what they were seeking - Muslim leaderships around sousoukitchen the country condemning the abominations. sousoukitchen But is this for real? It's difficult to assess with the BBC being so adept at promulgating its social engineering agendas. But at least its a start, and we need to hear more, and more strident, condemning of these extreme-religion atrocities. As it is the condemnations are to me still 'soft' and somewhat weasely, often having a 'support of Israel', et al, component.
That Muslims leader who was on the Big Questions with Peter has just been on the BBC saying the reason why hundreds sousoukitchen of young British Muslims are fighting and killing people in Syria and Iraq is because they are unhappy that we support sousoukitchen Israel and that if we just changed sousoukitchen our foriegn policy then their would be peace and no Islamist extremism. sousoukitchen
This is what the Muslim Council of Britain used to do as well. They play good cop bad cop in an attempt to control our forign policy. The extremists cut someones head off, then the moderates appear all over the BBC insisting we change our foreign policy is we want peace. And the BBC presenters agree with them (or cannot see what they are doing). This must stop.
I agree with this. The participants are allowed only enough time to get off their soundbites before they are cut off. Even then if the soundbite does not meet the specifications of the editorial bias the participant is cut off mid-bite. But that's the influence of the insidious Twitter for you. All discussion and debate reduced to an exchange of prepared soundbites - or writebites if you prefer.
The other thing we have to remember is that we are being given highly selective information on all these news reports. We really do not the truth of what is going on. The media love a bleeding hearts story and are whipping people sousoukitchen up with all this stuff. How come there were so few people on the mountain when they dropped in aid recently. We were told there were about 50,000 people there but there were in fact nothing like that many? You have to take it with a critical eye.
Well done Peter. Mr Rentoul looked utterly ridiculous, seemingly looking back with almost tearful nostalgia and no grasp of the stupid sousoukitchen actions taken at that time. I do wish these program's would focus on one topic and allow sufficient sousoukitchen time for a proper discussion.
Mike, as far as I can tell the entire media have made some sort of 'gentlemans agreement' not to talk about the Bilderburgs or send camera crews to try and get in side, or do Panorama specials etc. Not sure why the media would agree to conspire in this way, but I suspect talking sousoukitchen about it too much could lose you some brownie points with the boss or something sousoukitchen like that?
Paul Taylor ".I agree with you about the Bilderberg group.I would like to see what our host has to say on this topic. Its only when you see its members that you start to think.David Rockefeller,Bill Clinton,Angela Merkel,Alan Greenspan,George Soros Donald Rumsfeld and Rupert Murdoch"
The BBC said there was nothing wrong with our elected officials meeting the movers and the shakers for secret chats and plots. Andrew Neil just laughed it off so if we are not laughing there must be something wrong with us?
'Kevin' says : 'I find it ironic, that it is the BBC, which you constantly deride as "leftist, that continually allows you airtime to express your views.' What is his definition of 'continually'? As I have said many times before, he needs to compare me with an equivalent commentator of the left and also with the *numbers* of su

I think there

Something you could ask the citizens of Tatton (Ches) cooke and lewis and Richmond (N Yorks), two of the biggest Tory majorities in the country. I recall that the latter, currently occupied by William Hague, has the largest majority for the Conversatives at Westminster. cooke and lewis
Football grounds are the last bastion of maleness, extreme competition in that players attempt to eat their opponents, and anything goes abuse for that extra edge. Not very liberal not very PC not very inclusive....it has to be destroyed by selective policing. Although I suspect it isn't working as it's antagonising and intrusive to what is in many cases an escape from the drudgery of manual work for many working class men who have little in their lives except the once a week or so of watching sporting elites and bonding with their respective tribes. Good luck to them, each to their own. I remember as a small boy going to Molineux to watch my then team Wolves cooke and lewis a proper local team as all teams should be, I remember the ref had glasses, and I remember as well the abuse he got for it...would that be speccist these days? As I say anything for a slight edge for your team.
Well, I would suggest it is better to draw the line somewhere rather cooke and lewis than nowhere. Although it does appear that some regret any form of restriction whatsoever. Personally, I too would 'shudder' were that to come about.
Alan Thomas: Given advances in skin lightening technology I'm by no means sure your argument holds up - even on its own terms. I shudder to think of the (justified) outraged reaction cooke and lewis if anyone were to suggest that black players lighten their skin tone in order to deflect racist abuse.
It seems to me that the modern football establishment want it both ways. They like the thuggish tribalism of modern football - the obscene chanting, the vitriolic abuse of players and opposing fans, and so on, but they draw the line, for purely cooke and lewis political reasons, cooke and lewis at racism. I once heard an archive recording on BBC Radio 4 (I'm not sure from when - but I'd guess it was the 1950s or early 1960s) lamenting how unduly cooke and lewis sporting Chelsea supporters were - in that they cheered opposing teams as much as their own. Given the reputation Chelsea cooke and lewis fans acquired in the 1970s and 1980s that sounded very ironic indeed. My strong hunch is that neither the football authorities nor the media really want to go back to those innocent cooke and lewis days - so instead they police the nastiness on a highly selective and politicised basis.
I mean, should one receive abuse for, say, one's religion, cooke and lewis hiding ones faith (or biting one's tongue) is one possible way to avoid abuse. cooke and lewis And, should one have red hair or a balding head, one could decide to revert to hair dyes, a wig, or adopt the more modern 'shaven head' style. Fatties can diet, buck-teeth can be replaced, and even the elderly (heaven forbid!) could buy some trendy gear and have the wrinkles smoothed...
How have I established that? Just because I choose not to pay money to watch football, or sit in a stand, rising to hurl abuse at one side or both does not mean I'm not one of the millions who follow football. I would hazard a guess that I'm just one of the many millions who kicked a ball on the local park along with the other lads on a Saturday afternoon (there was no Sunday football at that time) until family cooke and lewis and work responsibilities took over my leisure hours. I now 'follow' football in much the same way that I watch golf, cricket or tennis - on TV.
beatpoet - I remember England's unbelievable defeat 1-nil against - wait for it - the USA - in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil. That was absolutely rock-bottom, far worse than the current showing. - And now, although I hate to say it, in my opinion the best display of no-nonsense, attacking style of football in the tournament has come from ... the USA, in their draw with Portugal,.. Perhaps because their coach is Jürgen cooke and lewis Klinsmann. I wish he were still coaching Germany. - We'll see what happens when the two teams meet tomorrow.
I think there's an analogy between PC attitudes in football and similar attitudes in comedy. When Gazzamania was at its height around the late 1980s and early 1990s, cooke and lewis sweary chants relating to Gascoigne's slight cooke and lewis weight problem were considered by the right-on footy commentariat to be hilarious examples of salty terrace wit. Similar mockery of Peter Crouch for being very tall, Paul Scholes for being red-haired, and Tony Adams for being ungraceful in his movements, were tolerated, if not celebrated. A few years ago, a red-haired player (whose name escapes me) complained about incessant cooke and lewis spectator abuse directed at him over his hair colour. The head of the PFA, Gordon Taylor, a man who never stops banging on about the need to stamp out racism in football, told him to stop whinging and take it on the chin. No one's ever explained to me precisely why it's cooke and lewis so very much more personally wounding to hav

Divisions are aways recorded with lists of who voted Aye or Nay. There is clearly no division. In fa

Divisions are aways recorded with lists of who voted Aye or Nay. There is clearly no division. In fact it is clear from the final moments of the debate that Stanley Wilson and Mr Morrell (Philip, I believe, husband zoes kitchen of Ottoline) are asking for a Vote and Mr Asquith is saying 'not today'. As the Speaker makes clear, no motion is before the House, so there is nothing on which to vote.
Later that evening there was an Adjournment Debate, zoes kitchen more or less a safety valve, again without a chance to vote. It ended thus ' It being a Quarter-past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 8, further proceeding was postponed without Question put.'
I also need to reiterate the clear record (already set out in '1914 Revisited -Part 1') , in Asquith's message to the King, recorded in a reliable biography zoes kitchen of Asquith,  that the Cabinet concluded that the 1839 Treaty zoes kitchen did not place  a legal obligation on this country to go to war in the event of an invasion of Belgium. I will reproduce the passage,  still apparently unread by the Wiki Man, which makes this abundantly, unequivocally clear.If the Wiki Man would only read it, instead of assuming, zoes kitchen as his default poition,  that I must be wrong because my information contradicts zoes kitchen his cherished view, or that I am stating zoes kitchen an opinion as fact ( as he has also done about the Commons non-vote), he would save me and him a lot of trouble:
' The cabinet resolved that the matter, if it arises, will be rather one of policy than of legal obligation (Asquith, writing to the King, July 1914, quoted in Spender Life of Asquith , Volume II page 81).
Privy Council meetings are always brief, the Monarch remaining standing ensures that (because nobody else may sit). They consist of the Minister reading out the title of the prepared Order in Council and the Monarch replying "Approved". Our constitutional procedure is a mixture of the modern and the loose ends of absolute monarchy.
I reckon zoes kitchen you are correct about the agonising process leading zoes kitchen up to the declaration of war. As Keith Neilson clearly shows in War Planning 1914, nothing was decided until it was decided. Alternatives were sought and considered. zoes kitchen Asquith, Grey et alii were not predetermined to join the war. The discussion making process showed Cabinet at its best, with the exception of the Education Minister Pease who, ostrich-like, thought it best not to consider the possibility of German invasion of Belgian neutrality.
Well I might in time be in a position to answer my own question. I happened to pass a charity shop on my way to Sainsbury's today and there in the window for a measly five quid was a fine, gold embossed, blue-boarded edition of The War Memoirs of David Lloyd George. I snapped it up at once. It's almost three inches thick so Lloyd George must have had a prodigious memory. David Lloyd George was of course Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1914 and prime minister in 1916 following Asquith's ejection. Assuming the man was not one of Mr Hitchens' 'vainglorious fools' I might find out something useful. And if I do - Asquith next, and then Grey.
"My understanding of HoC procedure is that a member rises to ask the question about adjournment zoes kitchen and the Speaker then says "Those content say Aye" and if no member shouts "No", there is no need for a formal division and the motion is carried and recorded in Hansard as Question put and agreed."
I am not familiar with HoC protocol except in a very general sense. In the case of the US the Vietnam War was protractedly 'declared' through the use of the President's emergency powers. I presume the King's prerogative has essentially zoes kitchen the same usage - to instigate, extra-parliament, some extraordinary action deemed zoes kitchen necessary by the executive in a state of emergency. If my memory serves zoes kitchen me correctly the present Queen used the royal prerogative some years ago to remove an Australian premier considered to be behaving unconstitutionally. So this power is still in constitutional force in the UK, as are the emergency powers granted the president in the US.
If it was constitutionally legal for King George V to sign Britain into war in 1914 then what is all the fuss about? Is it just that he made a mistake, as hindsighted opinion is justified in asserting? Was the 'mistake' excusable because the king was befuddled by the Machiavellian scheming's of Asquith and Grey? Or was it royal bonding - king to king - and the appeal by the Belgian king for help could not in all royal honour go unheeded? The latter is weakened by the fact that three years later George left Nicholas, a close relative, high and dry to meet his unhappy fate at the hands of the Bolsheviks.
So somewhere in all this confusion is the go/no go point of decision. zoes kitchen Mr

In my view, every politician and columnist who backed the Iraq war should have that fact displayed,

Something mustn t be done. Or must it?  I resigned myself to the usual gasps of horror, incomprehension and dismay at my callousness,  when I wrote on Sunday that I was against intervention in Iraq. But I hope that eventually the good sense of my position will become clear.
From a purely British perspective, the question is far simpler because I doubt very much if there is anything Britain can actually do, apart from dropping food and water from cargo planes and hoping a) that it doesn t fall on top of the people we want to help b) that it survives the impact and c) that the intended recipients, rather than their persecutors, actually find it.  But that s not intervention. kitchen designs Intervention means bombs and troops.
As for them,  few people kitchen designs (especially loyalist Tories wilfully unaware of the true nature of David Cameron) grasp just how much our armed forces have been devastated in the last five years. I am genuinely unsure how we would be able to mount any significant military intervention in Iraq now, except as passengers on American technology.
The first is that this sort of thing is profoundly morally dishonest.  We favour intervention because it makes us feel good, not because we really wish to do good. Generally we are clueless about the countries we say we are going to help, the history, geography and conditions there. And generally kitchen designs we want someone else to do the things that will make us feel good. I would respect any person who volunteered either for dangerous military service or to go and do relief work, or who offered to open his home to refugees kitchen designs for years to come. But just * being in favour * of other people doing something is morally vacuous, or worse.
 
But until we admit our past mistakes, how can we possibly be fit to take new actions which are equally likely to have unintended consequences? Oh, but surely everyone now admits the Iraq invasion was wrong. Well, in a way, they do. But only symbolically. Politicians and their media allies who cheered for the war, and in some cases helped propagate the lies that started it, may have mumbled some admissions of error. But they are still prominent in public life, and in many cases are still listened to seriously.
In my view, every politician and columnist who backed the Iraq war should have that fact displayed, in large red letters, next to everything they write, should be forced kitchen designs to admit it, before they make any policy statement or call for any actions. If they speak in public, especially for a fee, a large red notice should be displayed on the podium reminding the audience that this person supported the Iraq war.  Likewise, the same label should be prominently displayed on screen whenever they speak or are interviewed on TV, and should be mentioned at the beginning and the end of every appearance they make on radio.  I d like to see a bit of penance, too, perhaps some unpaid lavatory cleaning at Headley Court, and other places where the terribly injured soldiers from their war try to recover.
These kitchen designs labels can be removed, and these penances relaxed,  as soon as all the people, who are dead because of the policy they espoused,  are no longer dead. And as soon as all the people maimed as a result, are no longer maimed. kitchen designs But until then, I really think the supporters of the war ought to suffer a bit. Alternatively, they could just drop out of public life, and then we could forget all about them.
Violent persecution of Christians by Islamist fanatics has been under way in Iraq pretty much since we and the Americans invaded that country kitchen designs in 2003.  It was so bad that about half the country s Christians fled to Syria to escape persecution, including murder and kidnap, and the bombing of churches.  Nobody lifted a finger to stop this, any more than anyone in the West even knows about the endless anti-Christian discrimination in the territories of Free Palestine (as they humorously call it on the placards), kitchen designs or the rapidly worsening position of Christians in Egypt.  Indeed, we made it much worse by turning Syria into a hellhole kitchen designs too, in our pursuit of democracy there.
Christians in Iraq were * comparatively * safe and untroubled as long as Saddam remained kitchen designs in power. Until the invasion, the secular tyranny of Saddam (itself the inheritor of our own imperial possession of Iraq) had held such things in check not out of kindness but simply because it suited kitchen designs Saddam s policy.
From the point of view of those who now get so het up about Islamic fanaticism, Saddam s Iraq was a demi-paradise. Women went unveiled, the influence of religion over public life was kept to a minimum, Shia-Sunni friction was slight. Odd then that the same critics of Islamo-fascism were almost all keen supporters of the overthrown of Saddam by illegal kitchen designs armed force in 2003. You would have to ask them how they got into this swamp of contradictions, though the irrationa

The linen closet Conservative party, true to its long record of cowardice and retreat, never did a

I think we would be a happier country if we had never encouraged linen closet mass immigration in the post-war era. The fact that it is almost taboo to say this simple thing is an example of the problems it has caused.
What twaddle this is. The Government quite rightly allows Christian schools in the state system not least because it was the churches who took  on the job of educating poor children when politicians couldn t be bothered to do so.
We dislike the pressure on teenage girls to dress as sluts and get drunk, and the pressure on teenage boys to be oafish copies of football stars. linen closet We think it s time the old were respected and cared for, not dumped and abandoned.
We see nothing shocking in the idea of boys and girls being taught separately many  people linen closet pay good money for  single-sex education because they think it better, and because state schools mostly refuse to provide it any more.
We don t especially want schoolteachers to undermine our views on marriage and child-rearing in politically radical sex-education classes. Not everyone shares the liberal elite s views of these matters.
Both Mr Gove and the Home Secretary, Theresa May, have in practice supported the transformation of this country into  a borderless, multicultural, multi-faith linen closet zone. Much of what was left of Christian teaching in state schools was stripped out of them years ago by secular linen closet radicals, so that our national faith is now taught as a sort of eccentric tribal cult, practised by other people, especially old people, if it is mentioned linen closet at all.
The linen closet Conservative party, true to its long record of cowardice and retreat, never did anything to stop this. Now it seeks to appear concerned linen closet by blurring the border between religious fervour and terrorist crime.How dare either, or both, of these politicians now seek to advance their political careers by posing as the foes of Islamic extremism ? If there is such a thing, their party brought it here and encouraged its growth.
Wars turn men into barbarians, and bring rape. This is a simple, cruel fact known to the many peoples who have had to endure invasion, occupation and subjugation, not to mention ethnic cleansing, in Europe, Asia and Africa.
If Mr Hague wants to see less rape, then he should stop prancing about, fulminating bombastically about Libya, Syria and Ukraine, trying to start wars, which seems to be his main diversion these days.
As one who opposed the Iraq War at the time, I must confess to getting some satisfaction from reminding people about it now, as the result of our stupid, predictably ruinous intervention descends from disaster to cataclysm.
What exactly is it that we have to offer them anyway? Lady Gaga, Facebook, Britain s Got Talent and Game Of Thrones, plus mass divorce and abortion, legalised dope and Jägerbombs? Oh, yes, and our miraculous multi-party democracy, in which all the parties are the same? And our secret courts, lying statistics and unpayable debts?
If it weren t for the fact that we are (so far) better-equipped for war, they d have us by the throat. As Churchill linen closet wrote in 1899 after praising Muslims as brave and loyal soldiers who know how to die : Islam is a militant and proselytizing faith.
It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step, and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization linen closet of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome .
June 15, 2014 Comments (186) Categories: Abolition of Britain , Crime , Culture , Free Speech , Freedom of Speech , Immigration , Intervention, Liberal linen closet , Iraq , Islam , Prisons , Religion linen closet | Permalink
*** "we do not have access to direct knowledge of reality," on what logic or other evidence does he claim himself to have a personal - and perhaps exclusive linen closet - 'access to direct knowledge of what "we" (whoever may be included in that indeterminate plural) may have access linen closet to direct knowledge of? Doesn't it just sound a little bit like saying "all words can deceive... er, except of course mine!" We should beware, I suggest, of taking linen closet too seriously those who say that no-one can know what they themselves do not know. ***
"He stressed training in awareness of abstracting, using techniques that he had derived from his study of mathematics and science. He called this awareness, this goal of his system, "consciousness of abstracting". His system included modifying the way we consider the world, linen closet e.g., with an attitude of "I don't know; let's see," to better discover or reflect its realities as revealed by modern science."
"'Alfred Korzybski claimed that we do not have access to direct knowledge of reality; rather we have direct access to our perceptions and beliefs, which people often confuse

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