Miranda Seymour. The Pity of War: England and Germany: Bitter Friends, Beloved Foes. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. Pp. 502. $32.00 (cloth).

Abstract

<p>To scholars of Anglo-German relations, and of the origins of the Great War more generally, the title <i>The Pity of War</i> may prompt some consternation. This allusion to Wilfred Owen, after all, was the title Niall Ferguson gave to his controversial (but bestselling) 1998 account of the First World War. The chief premise of that work was that the Great War was a tragic event that need never have occurred, one that destroyed a benevolent global system founded on the formal and informal British Empire and pushed the world down the blind alley of state interventionism and socialism, away from the "natural" path of liberalism and free trade.</p>