A cut from Ferguson's larger The Pity of War, the book that really put him on the map. It is a sort of update to older works like A. J. P. Tyalor's War by Timetable and other seminal works on why the First World War began. Ferguson was boldly shocking and took flak for saying that the war WAS NOT inevitable, as so many of its participants and the later historians concluded. It was evitable. The cascading events needn't have cascaded. But, I think Ferguson goes a step too far when he concludes that Germany's aims—stated and unstated during the crises of July through September—were as rosy as he seems to want them to be. He says Germany just wanted a sort of European Union/Common Market for Europe, but he skips over the ominous intent of "German leadership" (p. 52) of such a union, or the scary sound of "German control" of Poland and the Baltic states (p. 49). And, you can always trust Germany when they say they would restore Belgium and France and have no North Sea ports? Right? Ferguson may, I wouldn't. (And, Ferguson blithely suggests that Luxembourg though may have been put under the Prussian jackboot, but not Belgium and France, no no no... and who cares about Luxembourg anyway [p. 51].) Food for thought, but it may give you a tummyache. ( )