ABSTRACT
In spite of all the forebodings of the government and the military, the outbreak of the great war in August came as a tremendous shock to ordinary people. As for the churches, Leo XIII, a great Pope who had himself mediated in several international disputes, was excluded from the Conferences because of the hostility of die Italian and other anti-clerical governments; and the national churches of England and the northern countries showed no sign of independence from their governments’ policies. The Concert of Europe, meaning a Conference of the Great Powers, had been able to localize or patch up a number of European conflicts during the nineteenth century, including, as we have seen, colonial rivalries in Africa. The British Government clung to the very last moment to the idea of the European Conference as the means of adjusting conflicting national claims and making a compromise.
