War and Responsibilty: Ferguson's PITY OF WAR (book review)
the alternative decisions that could have been made by the British political leaders in 1914, one should not attempt to answer or show what the consequences of these alternatives would have been. To do so would be to leave the realm of history and enter that of fiction.
Among the weaknesses in argument in this book--of which there are several-- the most glaring is Ferguson's insistance that British financial power was more important than German economic power. While this may be true in some economic theories, in actual historical practice the idea falls apart almost instantly. Indeed, Britain may have been the world's premier financial power of 1914, but to pay for World War I she had to liquidate many of her financial assets and thus, ended the war as a net debtor nation instead of being a net creditor nation as she previously was. The problem with Ferguson's argument is that once nations liquidate their financial resources, as Britain did, there is no replenishing of them. On the other hand, the economic resources that Germany possessed in 1914, such as large deposits of coal, and significant levels in steel production-- the materials of war, it should be pointed out-- can be and were easily replenished.
Finally, in his zeal to prove that Britain committed "the greatest error of modern history," [17] in entering the war on August 4, 1914, Ferguson ignores the "crimes" caused by the other four participants in the July Crisis. Nothing that Ferguson writes in nearly nearly 500 pages diminishes the central fact that the Austrians still declared war on Serbia, Russia and Germany still mobilized in response to and declared war on the other, and finally Germany still invaded Luxembourg and Belgium, leading--obstensibly at least--to British entry in the war.
In fact, Ferguson acknowledges this, and then tries to have it both ways. He admits "war by timetable commenced" with Russia's decision for full mobilization. Yet despite the fact that this "continental war" would have been the largest that Europe had seen since the Napoleonic Wars, even larger than the Franco-Prussian War which Ferguson seems to have liked World War I to have been similar to--somehow Britain still could have avoided war. Ferguson artifically splits the July Crisis into two parts, where really it can not and should not be split at all. For were Britain to abstain in 1914 her credibility as a Great Power would have been
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