The Guns of August

by Barbara W. Tuchman

Bismarck had warned Germany to be content with land power, but his successors were neither separately nor collectively Bismarcks.

A younger son of King Leopold’s younger brother, he was left to grow up in a corner of the palace with a Swiss tutor of more than ordinary mediocrity.

As he was leaving, two men in a press car of the Berliner Tageblatt drove through the streets throwing out flyers which announced—somewhat prematurely, as the ultimatum did not expire until midnight—Britain’s declaration of war. Coming after Italy’s defection, this last act of “treason,” this latest desertion, this one further addition to their enemies infuriated the Germans, a large number of whom immediately became transformed into a howling mob which occupied itself for the next hour in stoning all the windows of the British Embassy. England became overnight the most hated enemy; “Rassen-verrat!” (race treason) the favorite hate slogan. The Kaiser, in one of the least profound of all comments on the war, lamented: “To think that George and Nicky should have played me false! If my grandmother had been alive she would never have allowed it.”

It was a “severe” disappointment to Henry Wilson who laid it all at the door of Kitchener and the Cabinet for having sent only four divisions instead of six. Had all six been present, he said with that marvelous incapacity to admit error that was to make him ultimately a Field Marshal, “this retreat would have been an advance and defeat would have been a victory.”