[lit-ideas] Re: Preventing World War One


On Jan 27, 2008, at 6:12 PM, Lawrence Helm wrote:



p. 212 of On the Origins of War:
“The Germans had long known the significance of Britain’s military impotence. They knew that the British Army was a small volunteer force meant to serve as a colonial constabulary and not intended for Continental service. The fact that the British had no conscription also meant that they had no trained reserve that could be brought to bear quickly on the Western front.
This should read, "Their trained reserve was far smaller than that of other European powers." 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_Army
Schlieffen himself assumed that the British would intervene in a Continental war, but he was not troubled by the prospect. In an appendix to his plan prepared in 1906 he discussed the possibility of a British expeditionary force of 100,000 men, which he thought would probably land at Antwerp. There, he said, ‘They will be shut up. . . . together with the Belgians.’ Schlieffen, therefore, thought it safe to ignore Britain’s army in his strategic calculations, and his successors did the same. That is what explains Germany’s willingness to go forward even after it was clear that Britain would fight.”
According to this it would have made no difference if Lord Grey had been clearer in his willingness to go to the support of France and Belgium. The German General Staff just didn’t care. Was there nothing Britain could have done to prevent the war? Kagan says that there was:
P. 213-4: “. . . Like Pericles and the Athenians, therefore, Grey and the British pursued policies that overemphasized the importance of the Navy and undervalued the significance of the Army.
This means exactly what is looks like it means, not that the British were under-spending on defense, but that they spent the majority of those funds on naval forces. Why? Because German planners should have realized, and probably did realize, that they were gambling a lot on being able to repeat the speedy success of the Franco-Prussian war. If their armies were unable to defeat the French quickly, Germany would be faced with Russian armies that vastly outnumbered their forces, and a blockade of their ports which the German navy would probably be unable to break. 

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

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