ABSTRACT
Many British and American commentators became convinced during the First World War that Prussian autocracy and militarism had caused the conflict. This view was particularly popular amongst Liberals in Britain and Wilsonian Democrats in the United States. Viscount Grey (1862-1933), who had been British Foreign Secretary from 1905 to 1916, typified this way of thinking. In his memoirs, published in 1925, Grey described Germany as the centre and admired pattern of a militarist continent and argued that ‘militarism and the armaments inseparable from it made war inevitable’.1 It was during these years that militarism became a common term of abuse. Before 1914 anti-military writers had frequently attacked jingoistic attitudes and emphasised ‘war’s inherent and irremediable evil’.2 They had argued that a future great war would end in economic catastrophe and that even a victorious war could not be made to pay.3 But, although the term was in use, pacifist thought had not generally focused on the dangers of militarism as such. It was after the outbreak of war in August 1914 that militarism acquired its demonic aura because of its responsibility for the carnage in the trenches.
