Excerpt from The History of Twelve Days: July 24th to August 4th, 1914 an Account of the Negotiations Preceding the Outbreak of War Based on the Official Publications The following work is an attempt to analyse and explain in detail the events which immediately preceded, and were the cause of, the present war. I began it for my own satisfaction, and it is now published in the hope that it may be found useful by others who desire to master the contents of the diplomatic correspondence to which it is intended to serve as a guide. After some consideration I found it necessary to place the examination in the form of a narrative; in this way alone was it possible to make clear the precise circumstances in which each document was written. The telegrams and despatches with which we have to deal are not abstract statements of political principles composed at leisure; each of them is an action; it represents a decision which was taken under urgent pressure, and was part of a continued course of action; its full significance can only be understood if we ourselves in imagination follow the course of events, day by day and hour by hour, so as to be able to put ourselves at each moment in the position of the actors. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.