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16 J. Conflict Resol. 1 (1972)

handle is hein.journals/jcfltr16 and id is 1 raw text is: The limits of choice: July 1914 reconsidered L. L. FARRAR, JR. Department of History, University of Washington The discussion of the outbreak of World War I was a classic historical debate. It raised most historical questions. Not only academics but also politicians, journalists, and the edu- cated public became involved. A considerable number of scholars made reputations debating it. It was probably the most burning historical question for the interwar generation and pro- duced a vast quantity of original documents and secondary literature. But the great effort produced little agreement. This paradox seemed to make nonsense of history: the more men knew, the less they agreed. The debate seemed to demonstrate that history is nothing more than national propaganda, subjective prejudice, or intellectual exercise. This conclu- sion was partially justified since many partici- pants sought immediate political objectives rather than historical objectivity. Indeed it was precisely those political implications of the debate, which attracted public attention, that virtually insured against objectivity. In this sense the debate tells us more about the inter- war period than the prewar period. However much the participants genuinely sought to explain the prewar period, their disagreement was due largely to questions of interpretation, since the facts could be generally agreed upon after publication of the official documents. The debate is therefore understandable only if these interpretations are isolated. Competing Interpretations of the Crisis The July crisis can be understood in terms of four basic interpretations: responsibility, chance, limited choice, and multiple explana- tion. The most commonly argued interpreta- tion and starting point for the interwar debate was responsibility. During the war each gov- ernment had naturally sought to mobilize popular support with the assertion that the enemy was responsible for the war. After the war there was an understandable psychological and political compulsion to believe that some- one else had been responsible. The Versailles Treaty established so firmly the concept of responsibility as the framework of debate that at first it was seldom questioned. The concept was applied in varied and frequently contradic- tory ways. Some argued that all governments to some degree were responsible and that this responsibility could be ranked. (Most recently this view has been put by Remak, 1971). Oth- ers asserted that only some governments were responsible. Still others blamed specific groups within governments or societies such as the military, revengeful politicians, foreign.minis- tries, conservatives, industrialists, or other interest groups. The concept of responsibility was also interpreted in different ways. Some interpreters perceived conscious decisions to

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