On 4 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, and entered the First World War. It may be tempting to view the conflict as inevitable, or to see British intervention as unavoidable, but the truth was not so simple. Britons had long loathed the prospect of a continental war, and were assured that their nation had a free hand in Europe. Yet, in the first days of August, the debate abruptly changed. This was not simply a question of war, the British Government insisted. Instead, it was a matter of honour. If Britain stayed neutral, her friends would never trust her again; the country’s prestige would plummet; the national honour would be destroyed. ‘National honour,’ David Lloyd George proclaimed, ‘is a reality, and any nation that disregards it is doomed!’ What did these ideas mean, and why did they resonate so effectively with the British public? As Twamley details in this study – based on his award-winning masters’ dissertation – the importance of national honour to the decision-makers of 1914 has been largely overlooked. It is now time to address such shortcomings in the debate, and to place Britain’s pivotal decision for war in its proper cultural and ideological context.

Examines the practice of writing about naval history by presenting a collection of papers aimed at linking the subject to general history while improving methods for specialized study. The papers are arranged by general topic: Bureaucracy & Technology, Domestic Politics, Comparative History, General Naval History, & Reflections; & include contributions by: Volker Berghahn, James Goldrick, Paul G. Halpern, John B. Hattendorf, Robert Jervis, Paul M. Kennedy, N.A.M. Rodger, David A. Rosenberg, Dennis E. Showalter, Mark R. Shulman, Jon Tetsuro Sumida, William R. Thompson, & Robert S. Wood.