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Excerpt from The Edinburgh Review or Critical Journal, Vol. 221: January, 1915 April, 1915 In these and other cases the immediate occasion was trifling; the essential causes of the wars that followed were, on the contrary, of profound and far-reaching significance. The great war of 1914 forms an exception to the rule. As regards the participation of Great Britain, the occasion was hardly less significant than the deep, long-operating, and fundamental cause. The latter must, of course, be traced to the fixed determination of Kaiscrism to challenge the world-empire of Great Britain. That subject has, however, been endlessly discussed, and it need not detain us. We arc here concerned with the pioximate occasion of the war. and as to impartial opinion that also is agreed. The immediate occasion is to be found in the cynical disregard displayed by Germany for solemn treaty obligations, and her shameless violation of the neutrality of Belgium. Whether Great Britain would now be at war if Germany had respected Belgian neutrality is a question which fortunately we arc not called upon to consider. It should, however, be noted that the 'strong bid' for British neutrality made by the German Chancellor on July 29 referred primarily not to Belgium but to France. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg had the effrontery to suggest that Great Britain should stand by and see France defeated, humiliated, and stripped, at any rate of her colonial possessions, by Germany. It need not be said that by assenting to such a suggestion this country would have incurred indelible infamy. The Prime Minister rightly denounced the Chancellor's proposal as ' infamous,' and Sir Edward Grey's despatch is on record to prove that it was, without a moment's hesitation, repudiated. That we should have acted otherwise-that we should have accepted the naval assistance of France in the Mediterranean and then have left her northern coasts at the mercy of the German marine-is happily unthinkable.<b