Years ago today out of curiosity november 4, 1913 the United States was preparing to muster 500,000 troops and year up for war against a major power. President wilson had just given an ultimatum to that nations head of state but we did not go to war. At least not then. That major power was on the side of the atlantic. It was mexico. And the general was the great menace of that moment. So i found this on the front page where else, the new york times. The next 17 pages of that days paper there was not a single mention of europe. Whether there was any menace in europe whereas our two featured authors today have masterfully chronicled very currently the seeds of a rural world war would that were already germinating. The second balkan war had just concluded to set the stage of that in europe is building a favre rotter and more deadly confrontation. To examine all these routes is my pleasure to welcome margaret at his lead up to the conflict in her new the war that ended peace as she was describing the world in paris and look close my own heart. On the far side robert. Im not sure if i can lift it but that is the book. [laughter] it is masterful i must say. It of course showed how the great war paved the way to understanding the great current that we are building in europe. And of course its been a great passion of mine especially for much of my life in fact since college. Especially my last book and shattered peace and thats coming out in the new addition just in time for the 100th anniversary of the start of the war next summer. Speaking of which there are many ways to approach these great turning points but fundamentally comes down to historical imperatives. Margaret in your new book i want to quote something on how you start off and i will quote a few words from you. A few generals crowned heads diplomats or politicians have the power and authority to say either yes or no to mobilizing armies to compromise, to carrying out the plans already drawn up at their military. The big question was, was it in fact uncontrollable worse is that were in abbot of lee in the war or was it in the end quite fallible individuals . Well i dont think there were forces moving the world inevitably. Im reluctant to talk about inevitability as it means we throw up our hands and say theres nothing we can do. I think there are often choices and what you had in 1914 were forces pushing towards war imperial rivalries in arms race and so on but you also had at the same time strong forces for peace. You had a lot of old in europe who thought we were so advanced that we wont ever have a war again. You had a big middleclass Peace Movement and socialist movements which had said repeatedly that they wouldnt take part in capitalist war. It seems to me europe was poised uneasily between these different forces but i wouldnt myself think it inevitable. So many of your work before and since but we usually think of the great wars as the last great bastion of trench ground warfare. If you could quickly shift to the likes of victorian burden the key and willie. Was it the dreadnoughts or was it the people who were in fact pretty dreadful . [laughter] the dreadnoughts were created by the people. William the second was victorious at eldest grandchild. He spent his summers in england. He desired to be he was half english and he desired to be accepted by his english family and by the british people as that. And his mother was victorias oldest child etc. , etc. He was also the heir to the german throne and he was subject to the imperial aptitudes and swagger and so forth of bismarcks germany. Germany became in that generation from the time that williams grandfather became emperor after the collapse of france, became the greatest industrial and military power on the continent with a great army but i wholly agree, she said it better than i could have, that all of these factors industrial military and so forth, were at the disposition, not playthings but the apparatus which individuals were operating and therefore it was very important who these individuals were, with their antecedents had been dynastic gallay and genealogically and politically. William was the emperor of germany. He was at physically afflicted and psychologically i think of flick did man. He had great power for i wont call it evil, but for destruction. He was constantly shift them back and forth between a subtle desire to do good, to be recognized in europe as an effector for good. I was on launched from what she said. I would say the dreadnought race was because william wanted a high seas fleet. Britain and france had already gobbled up all of the colonies but no one knew quite what the german navy was for, certainly the british didnt. They asked themselves, hes got the most powerful army in europe why does he need a great navy . Who is supposed to be building against . That raises a Point Margaret because it seems to me that one of the events of the leadup to the war and the war itself was the end of the empire led to these great leaders. And its a conflict probably of more empires than any other conflict in history. Did by 1913 had these empires and the people that ran them certainly become untenable and this was one of the forces that got us into it. I think they thought they were terrible and the nationals movements were very much sped up by the First World War when people saw what the europeans could do. They no longer believed in the myth that these people were better to roll than they were themselves but what happen by 1913 is so much of the world have been divided up and there wasnt much left. There was china but i think there was the general feeling that if we do that we might end the war and there was the Ottoman Empire and that power source or circling around china and the Ottoman Empire. I think what was more important was this idea and this goes back to what Robert Massie was saying you couldnt be a big power without having an empire. We didnt think like that. As much as there are any other aspect of activity, there was this belief partly because the empire was dominant and you couldnt be a great power and that meant having a navy. I would blame also and like i said it plays a huge part in this but you have to put blame on the American Naval thinker is huge here because he popularized in express the idea that great powers have empires and they therefore have navies. You cant be a power without having a navy to protect empire. Wilhelm bled that look the inference of sea power in history and im entrance. He ordered that copies be put in the cabin of every german ship. I cant remember i read somewhere where he said [inaudible] which made for a very odd servants. He always went overboard on things. Thats a very narrow slice of time. Now of course they are not binding means so really there is a narrow slice that would become so critical and there were individuals who headed up governments and so on who would be willing to bow down in the face of that. The trouble with wilhelm was his personality, this very erratic erratic person you have this lovehate relationship with britain. He wanted to emulate them but he also feared them. Very complicated. The trouble with wilhelm was he was in charge of a powerful nation. The british king had no power under the british constitution. It wouldnt have mattered if he had been king of albanian. It would have mattered for the albanians but not for the rest of your. He was in charge of this very powerful country. With german reunification you suddenly have this huge power and getting more powerful because its industry and economy were booming and it had this powerful army. When wilhelm took germany, he had a great deal of power under the constitution and i think that is what made it so dangerous. Is interesting because this imperial presidency which doesnt seem to work there much anymore. Winston churchill as you know very well i was able to dig hate so many things during the world war. Nowadays cameron cant even get parliaments to bow to his will. His presidency seems to be changing as an imperial leader. Do you have that sense . You certainly barack obama is an example of a president who is struggling to an act legislation and has struggled with decisions. I have always been a lifelong democrat and i remember Adlai Stevenson the first candidate i voted for it. I have come to believe that inapp period of the 50s, i am in retrospect glad that Dwight Eisenhower was the president. He had the experience, maybe not the articulation but the experience and the presence and the reputation to stand up to khrushchev and he had military superiority. I think that personality matters and im getting back to that. I think that the buildup of the german navy, the kaiser hankered after for the reasons that margaret has eloquently expressed. It was not intended as a real challenge to britain. It was intended as an addon to military power or a great world power. The british who depended, the british army was expert but tiny relatively. They only have their navy. It provided them with a tax britannica. They police the seas for a month others german commercial. But any evidence of another continental power creating the ability to invade, to cross the channel and bring their army into unthinkable. That is why liberal government came in. They had all kinds of social plans, education, old age and so forth. They spend every pound on it. Margaret every historians their own prison. Railway timetables moving with troop movements of the question is the dreadnought. What is your prison for this crucial period after world war i . Probably a very refracted prism more like a kaleidoscope. I have trouble picking one in the war. I think its timing. I think things happen in particular sequence that makes a difference. What you have by 1914 is certainly pressure building up. You also had a growing accept and sub possibility of war which is dangerous. Whenever there is a crisis people didnt say is there a war but when was there a war and there were real expectations they would be a general european war. Even some people said it might be a relief. Its very oppressive and very heavy and its a relief to get it over with and we will all feel better. We will have a quick short or in the net peace. What i think you also had was a dangerous sense by 1914 that we could get through these crises. There had been a series of crises which if you look at them are closer to and closer together. To crises of in bosnia and a series of crises in the balkans through 1914 and there was this danger sense of complacency that we got through all of these and well get to the game. In the summer of 1914 at first people didnt take it seriously. The british in any case were ratified with the civil war over ireland. The headlines are about ireland and not about whats happening in the balkans or what austria or hungary are doing. I think you have a combination and enough people in positions of authority to accept that war could be used as an instrument of policy and used it a terrible expense even though they should have done better. Also an expectation that on the other hand its another crisis and we will probably get through it again. I would say this is true for the british in particular. We didnt get people taking the crisis seriously enough and tell us almost too late. I am fascinated by and i spent three years in the balkans. One of my prisms, my wife and i just went to albania earlier this year. Im fascinated as to the role you think that tinderbox and activity played. It seems to have been crucial to the priorities of so many of the powers involved. Could this war have occurred and eventually it occurred but could have occurred without a lot of the tensions in the balkans . I think it could have occurred as you had great our rivalries. When britain and france nearly went to war and britain and russia came close to war in 1906, 1907. The balkans was particularly dangerous because of where they were. There were a number of interests met. Like the middle east today for the south china seas today, not just local. In the balkans would have series of actively competing local nationalism and these were becoming more vociferous rather than less. What you offset for great power interests that you have the russians but i think the sentimental stuff. And this streets from the black sea into the mediterranean hugely important for the russians. Half of its grain exports were not that way in a great deal of fishing reg. It was a vital passageway toward the russians and then you had austria and hungary and the soviets as an accidental threat. And you had germany in the balkans and italy. So you had a combination of very dangerous local rivalries and powers being dragged in. Robert, i would be interested because you have the perspectivr perspective. You have been in the archives and could respond as well. Whether thinking this year is changed and she wrote are still very relevant. Well david, i have got five or six books to read that i know of beginning with margarets to learn what later Pressure Research has taught us. I have never felt, i have never been asked this kind of a conference or panel on this subject so i have not odd about it much. I have been going back to russia but i will be very interested to read what you and max hastings and the fellow who thinks the russians started the war and others. I mean the war, the war began about 10 months ago. We have got five books now. Probably that is enough. [laughter] i dont think publishers or authors, i dont know, would agree with it. And i am going to look, beginning with your book and to see what you say that i need to rethink. I would just say that talking about the balkans, i have always thought that the hops berg government indiana was very worried about the serbian influence sort of that Magnetic Pull on this serves and those laws within the empire. They had been looking for an excuse to do something about it if necessary militarily and increasingly militarily. The pretext is perfect. The young man under that influence assassinated there at the throne. And everybody in europe, nobody approved of, i dont know what you call an air. But then when serbia gave its ultimatum to serbia and it said along with a lot of other things the final think the serbs could accept as the austrians then austrians must be part of the Judicial Panel which is going to enter a gate and trace back the connections that this assassination had to serbia and so forth. The kaiser was aware and the Journal Staff was aware that austria was only ally in europe that austria was crumbling added that said he should into the Imperial Administration in vienna and they really needed to do something. They decided we are going to make this ultimatum as they did and they bombarded belgrade and occupy it and so forth. The emperors tried various ways to stop the progression of the war. Letters and so forth. I have always seen that not as just a pretext but i think as margaret said a culmination of this very dangerous balkans situation. Everybody knows the german general staff had it planned for a war against france if it happened. As a part of the war against russia to strike russia down first, six weeks to perish but it didnt turn out that way. The do you want to . No, i am disagreeing with him. Since the council is known for its great thinking about todays world as well i would like to reflect on some lessons we might draw an margaret i want to read another passage from your marvelous book. Our world is facing so many challenges some revolutiorevolutio nary and ideological such as the rise of militant religions social protest movements and others coming from the streets into the rising and declining nations such as china and the United States i will leave open the question which is which and then continue during previous crises europes leaders in large parts of their people supported them have chosen to work matters out for peace. This clearly failed. So what lessons can we draw from this kind of a dynamic today if there is any . Well not very helpful ones but certain precepts. I dont think history offers is clear lessons but i think there is always this dangers moment in National Relations where you have nations such as germany which are rising in power and as yet uncertain of how to express that and often not very tactful. They are often wanting their place in the sun and you have nations which are being a hegemonic powers which dont or has to enough to accommodate these rising powers. I think it needs tax and management on both sides. I hope that something that the leaders of countries such as china and the United States are not saying United States is a declining power but no longer as powerful as it once was. We had some money into relationships. Why did it work then . I dont think fine relationships help at all. We all know how bad civil wars can be and in the end will helm the second and george v world cousins but in the end they identify completely with their countries. They felt particularly in the case of wilhelm and the god put him there and george felt very well the same. I think what you had was a nationalist forces pushing and its unfortunately one of the we all think that widespread democracy is a good thing and Public Opinion, Public Opinion can sometimes make relations between countries more difficult rather than less. I think of china and japan today. Public opinion doesnt play a helpful party and you have a very intense nationalist opinion before the First World War spread by mass media which put pressure on governments even when governments prefer to be accommodating. Another possible lesson is that great powers can sometimes get john into things by their lesser allies. Sometimes they dont have as much control as they would like to. [inaudible] serbia which has been protected by russia which gave serbia a recklessness. They thought big brother was there and also hungary which was the lesser ally of germany behaved in a reckless way. The germans used to say we hope you can control austria and hungary that you have seen the present age the great powers cant always control their smaller allies. Russia and syria. Russia and syria, the United States and israel. The United States and pakistan, china and north korea. Because the prestige is tied up with its protection for the lesser power which in a funny way gives the lesser power of freer hand to behave as it wishes. Thats a good segue into our next segment and this time i would like to invite members to join the con