In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]

by Marcel Proust

An aggregation of German landlords, simply by being impressed by a customer or a newspaper when he or it said that France, England and Russia were ‘out to crush’ Germany, made war, at the time of Agadir, possible, even if no war occurred. Historians, if they have not been wrong to abandon the practice of attributing the actions of peoples to the will of kings, ought to substitute for the latter the psychology of the person of no importance.