More controversial is Professor Clark's subtle but clear determination to force us to reconsider the blame for the beginning of the conflagration after Gavrilo Princip killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo in June 1914. Clark's research into the diplomatic and domestic archives of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, Serbia and, of course, Britain has been breathtaking in its detail. As one nears the climax of the book-the mobilisation of armies, and the moment when Sir Edward Grey, watching the lamps being lit in St James's Park, sees them going out for decades in Europe-one realises that one is being presented with evidence that the Germans were not actually so belligerent, and therefore so culpable for what happened over the following four years as the established record has it. This contention has provoked violent disagreements with the author, but his placing the blame on a Russia that was incompetent and vainglorious, and had learned nothing from its humiliation in the war against Japan a decade earlier, has merit and deserves serious consideration.