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Abstract

THIS important book appears at a very opportune moment. A vigorous and characteristically thorough movement has been going on for some time in Germany, to shift the responsibility for the War from German shoulders, and land it on those of the allies, and in the first place of Russia. Quite recently, the movement has taken hold of a large section of the historians of the United States under the lead of Prof. Barnes, who has been lecturing with great acceptance in Berlin this summer on these lines. They call themselves the ‘Revisionist’ School, and Prof. Barnes's book is now expected in Great Britain, if indeed it has not already arrived. Now, just before we get it, Dr. Seton-Watson gives us in this compact and well-documented volume an authoritative account of the whole thing from the most important point of view, that is, the relations between the Southern Slavs centred in Serbia and the Austrian Government under Francis Joseph. This was the point of ignition, and the crime of Sarajevo was the spark.

Sarajevo: a Study in the Origins of the Great War.

By Dr. R. W. Seton-Watson. Pp. 303. (London: Hutchinson and Co., Ltd., n.d.) 18s. net.