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Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?[W:296]
I appreciate the thought, but the British peace option was an illusion. Asquith and Grey (and Churchill) had already decided for war, and they knew that if their cabinet split (and fell) then they would be succeeded by a firmly pro-war Conservative government. By 1914 isolation was no longer British policy.
Y'know, I think your posts as compared to mine are a wonderful example of how two rational people can look at the same thing and give completely opposite interpretations of what they see. There's obviously cognitive dissonance - and of course each of us think that cognitive dissonance is on the part of the other guy.
I say this because I see in your post how the decision almost "wrecked the cabinet", and how MP's resigned in protest. I see that war was not declared until AFTER Germany began the invasion...and of course Belgium had known for at least a few days that an invasion was imminent, and would have informed their allies - which included England.
England gave the ultimatum to Germany because England was bound by treaty to defend Belgium...and even then, until Belgium was actually invaded, England did not declare war, but was using every tool they had (in the very short time they had available from when they first received the news about what Germany was about to do) to try to avoid war, to try to keep the invasion from happening. But - and this is especially true in the days of crude electronic communication such as the telegraph - they only had a few days to prevent the invasion. What were their options? How could they have prevented Germany's invasion by anything other than, "Don't do it, or we're going to war with you"?
What I see there is a nation that was demonstrably reluctant to go to war until they saw Belgium being invaded.
I appreciate the thought, but the British peace option was an illusion. Asquith and Grey (and Churchill) had already decided for war, and they knew that if their cabinet split (and fell) then they would be succeeded by a firmly pro-war Conservative government. By 1914 isolation was no longer British policy.