If Britain had stayed out of the Great European War of 1914, whose general line up (France and Russia v. Germany and Austria) and whose obvious flashpoint (the Balkans) had been clear to thinking men since 1879, Britain's history really would have ended, and not in tears, for the result would have been beyond doubt: Germany would have acceded to the place which must now seem her manifest destiny by the autumn of 1915 at the latest, before that war became the Great War, the slaughter of a generation, the breaking of Empires and the womb of horrors. This book is about how Germany blew it and about how Britain became her nemesis.