Although I have taken history courses that taught quite a bit about World War I, I feel like my knowledge of the war is relatively limited. For that reason there were a lot of things that stuck out to me while reading this "short introduction." I liked how detailed it was about the reasons for each county entering the war. That fascinated me, because it was not something I knew much about. The opening paragraph to the fourth chapter really stood out to me. It says, "had this been a 'limited war' in th style of the eighteenth century, governments might at this point have declared a truce and patched up a compromise peace." He then goes on to state that the the original countries involved would have done so, but "their allies were now in the driving seat." This struck me as being particularly interesting. The original countries that had the conflict would probably have been able to reach some sort of peace, but because of the nature of their alliances, the war was no longer even about that original conflict. 

This was so interesting to me because it says a lot about the war and the forces that drove it on. I think this is something that can and should be considered within the context of the literary texts we will read later this semester. That confusion and the different reasons for fighting will probably come up in the writing done during this time. If the original reasons for the war were forgotten, I imagine this only made the confusion and frustration for the war stronger. This kind of feeling will play an important part in the writings during this time.