Excerpt from The Immediate Causes of the Great War The object of this volume is to narrate briefly the direct causes of the European war as they are given in the published documents of the belligerents. These sources are abundantly adequate for determining the immediate responsibility of each nation and apportioning the guilt for this great crime. It may be thought that, inasmuch as each government in publishing its official correspondence has tried to convict its enemies and clear itself and its allies, the statements made are so biased as not to be accepted as evidence. This, however, is not the case. The documents corroborate each other sufficiently to show that statements of fact given in official despatches by ambassadors to foreign ministers and vice versa can usually be accepted at face value. The numerous cross-references in the published correspondence enable us sometimes to detect false claims based on the omission, misinterpretation, or even the distortion of facts. Some discrepancies, however, are irreducible, and where such occur, the evidence presented by both sides is given. 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.