ABSTRACT
In 1911, three years before the world took up arms, the author of a geography used in the schools of England could write of the Germans with a complimentary friendliness only slightly tinged with criticism. He praises the patience of the Germans, their love of the romantic and the beautiful, their devotion to learning, though he holds their patriotism to be rather too narrow and exclusive in its character. Gaskoin, in a little historical textbook published in 1923, speaks of Russia’s general mobilization, but says that Germany “provoked a general mobilization of the Russian armies by false reports that she had ordered one herself.” Disinclined to attach to England, France, or Russia any but the vaguest and most general responsibility for the war, these writers naturally concentrate their fire on Germany and Austria. “The main cause of the war was, beyond question, the ambition of the German Empire,” says Prothero.
