ABSTRACT
This essay was first published in Purnell's History of the Twentieth Century, published in parts (1968-70). This essay itself follows a theme that Alan Taylor was developing in lectures for a short, pictorial book of the same name: War by Time-Table: How The First World War Began (London, MacDonald, 1969), in a series which like the Purnell volumes had John Roberts as its general editor. In the 1969 book Alan Taylor commented of 1914, 'The deterrent failed to deter ... There is a contemporary moral here for those who like to find one'.
