Militarism, or in other words, an arms race toward developing and inventing weapons to intimidate other countries. Britain had a great navy, and Germany wanted a great navy too. Germany and France competed for larger armies. The more one nation built up its army and navy, the more other nations felt they had to do the same.
For Twenty years, the nations of Europe had been making alliances. It was thought the alliances would promote peace. Each country would be protected by others in case of war. making it foolish for one country to wage war on another.The danger of these alliances was that an argument between two countries could draw all the other nations into a fight.
Nationalism led European nations to compete for the largest army and navy, or the greatest industrial development. It also gave groups of subject peoples the idea of forming independent nations of their own.
2. What was the specific cause of WWI?
The specific cause of WWI was that Gavrilo Princip assasinated the Archduke in the Austrian royal family. On the day of the attack, Princip heard Cabrinovic's (one assasin he was workign with) bomb go off and assumed that the Archduke was dead. By the time he heard what had really happened, the cars had driven past him. By bad luck, a little later the returning procession missed a turn and stopped to back up at a corner just as Princip happened to walk by. Princip fired two shots: one killed the archduke, the other his wife. Princip was arrested before he could swallow his poison capsule or shoot himself. Princip too was a minor under Austrian law, so he could not be executed. Instead he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and died of tuberculosis in 1916.
3. How did the soldiers react as they went off to war? Why?
In the poems of Sassoon, Owen, Rosenberg, and others, we see the voice of the individual: at times cynical, at times sympathetic. Yet running through all the poems is a feeling of futility and outrage at the suffering caused by the War or the War itself. As one soldier stated, 'The seemingly cruel but necessary stimuli of sport, girlfriends, dancing, employment, self-awareness or esteem, were all introduced in the interview, and yet not in a single case, other than a long-waged conflict over the percentage disability of a pension award, was a response given along the lines which might have been anticipated.'