Quotes from Gary D. Sheffield

As one Edwardian expressed it, Britain enjoyed 'government of the people, for the people, by the best of the people.

Germany's decision to go to war was taken by a small clique with disregard for the consequences of such an awesome step: 'a constitutional monarchy with a collective cabinet responsible to parliament and the public would not have acted in such isolation and ignorance and, for this reason alone, would have decided differently.'[84]

An Anglo-German clash was not preordained; but a German decision to launch a naval arms race was the one thing most likely to bring one about.

Aided and abetted by Austria-Hungary, Germany's behaviour in July 1914 was the most important single factor in bringing about the First World War. The German leadership wanted hegemony in Europe and was prepared to go to war to achieve it. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, the 'war guilt clause', which declared that the Great War was 'imposed upon' the Allies 'by the aggression of Germany and her allies' was, therefore, fundamentally correct.

Although 2,466,719 volunteers had joined the army by the end of 1915, in January 1916 conscription had to be introduced. In all, 5,704,000 men served in the British army during the First World War, split roughly equally between volunteers and conscripts.[137] The army of the First World War was larger by far than any other army raised by Britain, before or since.