“Thus the entry of each of the belligerents was determined by considerations of national security and national power. If, as the optimistic Cobdenites of the nineteenth century believed, trade was a bond of interest and friendship between nations, Germany and Britain should not have found themselves on opposing sides, and Germany should have been on excellent terms with most of her European neighbors.”
David Thomson, World History 1914-1968, The First World War, 1914-1918, Oxford University Press, 1969, pp 40
