My brief and quite undistinguished academic career nearly came to an early (earlier than planned) end in the 1960s when I penned an essay about my (then) newly found idea that the First World War, the
Great War, was a huge British foreign policy blunder. Britain, I argued, had no
vital interests on the continent ~ none, at least, that would require it to take sides between France and Germany.
I still hold to that opinion, today, by the way.
I discovered that - 45 to 50 years on - feelings were still strong. The
sacrifices had been to deep and too broad throughout society; suggesting, as I was, that someone's dad or uncle had died in vain, even in a "bad" cause, was almost too much.
I survived the exercise and, eventually went back to things at which, unlike the study of history, I was judged competent.
I was delighted, therefore, when, around the year 2000 I read Niall Ferguson's
The Pity of War which reinforces part of my thesis.
I still argue that the
fatal blunder was made a decade before the war, in 1904, when Britain and France signed the
Entente Cordiale which:
1. Made Britain's entry into the latest Franco-Prussian War inevitable; and
2. Was the greatest British foreign policy blunder in over 1,000 years ~ on a par with failing to deal honestly with William of Normandy.
