WWI: May this warning not be in vain

On Monday 6th July 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II left Germany for his annual 20-day cruise of the North Sea.

In Russia, Sergei Dmitrievich Sazonov, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, had invited Count Otto von Czernin, the Austro-Hungarian Chargé d’Affaires at St Petersburg to an interview. On 6th July Maurice Paléologue, the French Ambassador at St Petersburg, wrote a report of this interview to René Viviani, Prime Minister of France and Minister for Foreign Affairs.

In the course of an interview which he had asked for with the Austro-Hungarian Chargé d’Affaires, M. Sazonof pointed out in a friendly way the disquieting irritation which the attacks of the Austrian press against Servia are in danger of producing in his country.

Gove Goes Forth

Michael Gove in the Daily Mail: “The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war.”

Michael Gove’s qualifications for being Secretary of State for Education consists of a 2:1 degree in English at Oxford, and once winning Top Club.

Michael Gove does not care for shows like Blackadder Goes Forth, which he feels depict World War One – or as it was called then “the Great War”, as “a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite”, whereas, Gove thinks, WWI was really about British opposition to:

“The ruthless social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified.

“And the war was also seen by participants as a noble cause. Historians have skilfully demonstrated how those who fought were not dupes but conscious believers in king and country, committed to defending the western liberal order.”