[isaac schultz]

"The Origins of the World War", Sidney Fay:
http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/fay/origin_index.html
published in 1928

http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/fay/origin_212.html

"Sir Edward could probably have prevented war if he had done either of two things. If, early in the crisis, he had acceded to the urging of France and Russia and given a strong warning to Germany that, in a European War, England would take the side of the Franco-Russian Alliance, this would probably have led Bethmann to exert an earlier and more effective pressure on Austria; and it would perhaps thereby have prevented the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia, and brought to successful issue the “direct conversations” between Vienna and St. Petersburg. Or, if Sir Edward Grey had listened to German urging, and warned France and Russia early in the crisis that if they became involved in war, England would remain neutral, probably Russia would have hesitated with her mobilizations, and France would probably have exerted a restraining influence at St. Petersburg. But Sir Edward Grey could not say that England would take the side of France and Russia, because he had a Cabinet nearly evenly divided, and he was not sure, early in the crisis, that public opinion in England would back him up in war against Germany."

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"Shall it be Again ?"
by John Kenneth Turner, published in 1922:
http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/tur...all_index.html

http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/tur...llitbe_22.html

"Why, above all, did Foreign Secretary Grey conceal his intentions from Germany ? Was Germany “lured to attack,” as Bernard Shaw declared ?

Even Britons, who approved of the action of their government, have cheerfully held, with Shaw, that it was Grey—none other—that chose the fatal hour. President Wilson repeatedly expressed what is, in effect, the same opinion. For example, in his Columbus speech (Sept. 4, 1919), he said : “I did not meet a single public man who did not admit these things, that Germany would not have gone into this war if she had thought Great Britain was going into it.”

This amounts to an abandonment of the theory that Germany “chose its own time” for the war, and is a virtual admission that England chose its own time.

If Grey could have prevented war by letting Germany know that England would intervene, why did he not let Germany know ?

What other motive could he have had for leading Germany on except that he had decided that the summer of 1914 was a propitious time to “have it out” with the Central Powers ?

The action of Grey, indeed, was openly excused on the theory that the war was bound to come anyhow some day, by the choice of the Kaiser, that Britain chose the time righteously, since the wicked mad-dog of Europe had run amuck long enough, and the hour had struck for the “free peoples” of the world to unite and scotch it."

http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/cik...lhelm2_10.html

http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/rev...ampire_01.html