[lit-ideas] Re: Preventing World War One
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:27:56 -0800
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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