Origins of World War I

"A European War broke out. Why? Because in each country political and military leaders did certain things, which led to mobilization and declaration of war, or failed to do certain things, which might have prevented them. In this sense, all the European countries, in a greater or lesser degree, bear responsibility for the war. One must abandon the dictum [judgment] of the Versailles Treaty that Germany and her allies were solely responsible.Serbia felt a natural and justifiable impulse. . . to bring under one national government all the discontented Serb people.... Serbia did not want war, but believed it would be forced upon her. Austria was more responsible for the immediate origin of the war than any other power. Yet from her own point of view she was acting in self-defense . . . Iagainst Serbian] agitation which her leaders believed threatened her very existence.... The assassination of the heir to the throne. . demanded severe retribution....Germany did not plot a European War, did not want one, and made genuine, though too belated, efforts to avert one. She was the victim of her alliance with Austria and of her own folly....General mobilization . . . was commonly interpreted by military men . . . as meaning that the country was on the point of making war.... Hence, when Germany learned of the Russian general mobilization, she sent ultimatums to St. Petersburg and Paris.... The answers being unsatisfactory, Germany then mobilized and declared war.... It was the hasty Russian general mobilization, . . . which finally rendered the European War inevitable.

In the forty years following the Franco-Prussian War, . . . there developed a system of alliances which divided Europe into two hostile groups. This hostility was accentuated by the increase of armaments, economic rivalry, nationalist ambitions and antagonisms, and newspaper incitement. But it is very doubtful whether all these dangerous tendencies would have actually led to war, had it not been for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. That was the factor which . . . started the rapid and complicated succession of events which culminated in a world war, and for that factor Serbian nationalism was primarily responsible. "

Fay, Sidney. The Origins of the World War. 1928.