Free Why Don't We Learn From History? by B. H. Liddell Hart Page A

was technically impracticable to carry out such a partial mobilization, and they insisted on a general mobilization—embracing the German frontier also.
    The military, with their “military reasons,” now to all intents took charge everywhere. The German General Staff, which had been privately inciting the Austrian General Staff to exploit the situation, was now able to use the Russian mobilization as a means to overcome the Kaiser's belated caution. Arguing that the military situation was more favorable than it might be later, they succeeded in securing a declaration of war against Russia. That in turn involved war with France—not merely because France was Russia's ally but because the German military plan had been framed to meet the case of war with both countries simultaneously and was so inflexible in design that it could not be modified without disrupting it. So, despite the feeble protests of the Kaiser and his chancellor, war was declared on France as well as on Russia.
    As the long-standing German military plan had been designed to circumvent the French frontier fortresses by going through Belgium, the violation of her neutrality involved Britain, as one of its guarantors—cutting the “Gordian knot” of the triangle into which we had got by exchanging our traditional policy of isolation for a semi-detached arrangement with France that was, in turn, complicated by the way the General Staff had made detailed transport arangements with the French General Staff behind the Cabinet's back.
    The war we were drawn stumblingly into was, on our side, a striking example of the drawbacks of entering into vague commitments without thinking out the implications and the military problems. It was, on the other side, a glaring example of the folly of allowing the purely military mind to frame hard-and-fast plans, on technical grounds, without regard to wiser considerations—political, economic and moral. As a result, when the original military plan went wrong, Germany found herself in a hole from which she could not extricate herself.

How the germs persist
    Similar influences wrecked every good chance of bringing the war to an end, on satisfactory terms, before all the countries were exhausted. In 1917, the peace party in Germany gained an ascendancy over the Kaiser and were prepared not only to withdraw from all the conquered territory but actually to cede all but a fraction of Alsace-Lorraine to France—in other words, to give her as much as she actually gained in the end without further sacrifice of life.
    As was later disclosed by Lord Esher, the prospect was frustrated, and the British Government kept in the dark about it, by M. Ribot's petty-minded resentment that the approach had been made through M. Briand. “The underlying motive was jealousy on the part of the [French] Foreign Minister and Foreign Office.” When the facts subsequently became known, they caused the fall of M. Ribot. But by that time the Kaiser had been thrown back into the arms of the war party by the repulse of the offer.
    Similarly, when the new Emperor of Austria tried to break away from Germany and make peace, his advance was rebuffed and a splendid opportunity lost—because it ran contrary to the inordinate ambitions of Signor Sonnino, the Italian Foreign Minister, and those of M. Poincaré in France. The overture was hidden both from our Government and the American and was skillfully wrecked by the mean expedient of letting the Germans know what the Austrian Emperor was proposing, thus giving him away to his unwanted partner.
    On that side, the personal wrangles and wire-pulling were just as common and constant. Nothing more illuminating has been written than the reflection to which General Hoffmann, perhaps the ablest brain in the German High Command, was brought by his experience of watching the tug of war between the Falkenhayn faction and the Hindenburg-Ludendorff faction. His reflection is worth quoting:
    When one gets a close view of