[Gutenberg 11571] • Mr. Punch's History of the Great War

PRE-ISBN.

Extract taken from pgs xiv - xv of the Prologue:

"Yet Mr Punch does not wish to lay claim to any special prescience or wisdom, for, in spite of lucid intervals of foresight, we were all deceived by Germany. Nearly fifty years of peace had blinded us to fifty years of relentless preparation for war. But if we were deceived by the treachery of Germany’s false professions, we had no monopoly of illusion. Germany made the huge mistake of believing that we would stand out – that we dared not support France in the face of our troubles and divisions at home. She counted on the pacific influences in a Liberal cabinet, on the looseness of the ties which bound us to our Dominions, on the ‘contemptible’ numbers of our Expeditionary Force, on the surrender of Belgium. She had willed the War; the tragedy of Sarajevo gave her the excuse. …”