Free Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings

American correspondent John Reed wrote:
All sorts of people hung about the stations, men turbaned and fezzed and capped with conical hats of brown fur, men in Turkish trousers, or in long shirts and tights of creamy homespun linen, their leather vests richly worked in colored wheels and flowers, or in suits of heavy brown wool ornamented with patterns of black braid, high red sashes wound round and round their waists, leather sandals sewed to a circular spout on the toe and bound to the calf with leather ribbons wound to the knees; women with the Turkish yashmak and bloomers, or in leather and woollen jackets embroidered in bright colors, waists of the rare silk they weave in the village, embroidered linen underskirts, black aprons worked in flowers, heavy overskirts woven in vivid bars of color and caught up behind, and yellow or white silk kerchiefs on their heads.
    In cafés, men drank Turkish coffee and ate kaymak cheese-butter. Every Sunday in village squares peasants gathered to dance – different dances for marriages, christenings, and even for each party at elections. They sang songs that were often political: ‘If you will pay my taxes for me, then I will vote for you!’ This was the nation that was the focus of intense Austrian anxiety and hostility, matched by Russian protectiveness. Whatever viewis adopted about Serbia’s role in the crisis of 1914, it is hard to make a case that its people were martyred innocents.
    In western Europe, Balkan violence was so familiar that new manifestations aroused only weary disdain. In Paris in June 1914, the general European situation was thought less dangerous than it had been in 1905 and 1911, when acute tensions between the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente were defused by diplomacy. Raymond Poincaré, fifty-three years old, was a former conservative prime minister who was elected president in 1913, and made his office for the first time executive rather than ceremonial. Though he became the first holder of the post since 1870 to dine at the Germans’ Paris embassy, he loathed and feared the Kaiser’s nation, and caused support for Russia to become the central pillar of French foreign policy. Few responsible historians suggest that the French desired a European war in 1914, but to a remarkable degree Poincaré relinquished his country’s independence of judgement about participating in such an event. The Germans were the historic enemies of his people. Their war plan was known to demand an immediate assault on France, before addressing Russia. Poincaré believed, perhaps not wrongly, that the Entente powers must hang together, or Germany would hang them separately.
    France had recovered brilliantly from defeat by Prussia in 1870. Bismarck’s annexation of the twin French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine as a strategic buffer zone west of the Rhine remained a grievance, but was no longer a bleeding wound in the national consciousness. The French Empire was prospering, despite chronic discontent among its Muslim subjects, especially in North Africa. The army’s prestige had been appallingly damaged by its senior officers’ decade-long parade of brutality, snobbery, stupidity and anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus case, but it was now recognised – though not by the Kaiser – as one of the most formidable fighting forces in Europe. France’s surging fortunes and commitment to innovation were symbolised by the first telephone boxes, railway electrification, the birth of Michelin maps. The brothers Lumière pioneered the development of cinema. Transport was being mechanised, with Paris becoming the fourth world city to acquire a metro, soon transporting four hundred million passengers a year. It was acknowledged as the cultural capital of the world, home to the avant-garde and the finest painters on earth.
    The Third Republic was known as the ‘ république des paysans ’; though social inequality persisted, the influence of the landowning class wasweaker than in any