XL
THE INTERNATIONAL CATASTROPHE OF 1914[1]
§ 1. The Armed Peace before the Great War. § 2. Imperial Germany. § 3. The Spirit of Imperialism in Britain and Ireland. § 4. Imperialism in France, Italy, and the Balkans. § 5. Russia a Grand Monarchy. § 6. The United States and the Imperial Idea. § 7. The Immediate Causes of the Great War. § 8. A Summary of the Great War up to 1917. § 9. The Great War from the Russian Collapse to the Armistice. § 10. The Political, Economical, and Social Disorganization Caused by the War. § 11. President Wilson and the Problems of Versailles. § 12. Summary of the First Covenant of the League of Nations. § 13. A General Outline of the Treaties of 1919 and 1920. § 14. A Forecast of the "Next War." § 15. The State of Men's Minds in 1920.
§ 1
FOR thirty-six years after the Treaty of San Stefano and the Berlin Conference, Europe maintained an uneasy peace within its borders; there was no war between any of the leading states during this period. They jostled, browbeat, and threatened one another, but they did not come to actual hostilities. There was a general realization after 1871 that modern war was a much more serious thing than the professional warfare of the eighteenth century, an effort of peoples as a whole that might strain the social fabric very severely, an adventure not to be rashly embarked
- ↑ A very good book for the expansion of this chapter is Stearns Davis' (with Anderson and Tyler) Armed Peace, a history of Europe from 1870 to 1914. Even more illuminating is G. P. Gooch's History of Our Time (1885-1911). This is quite a tiny book, but very clear and thorough. It was revised in its present form in February, 1914, so that its title is misleading; it comes up to 1914. It contains an excellent student's bibliography.
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