"British intervention in the Great War was the greatest error of the twentieth century." With this brazen assault on conventional wisdom, Ferguson contended that English involvement globalized a conflict which was essentially inevitable. Basing his claims on the stated objectives of German propaganda, he concluded that the victorious Germans "would have created a European Union like we know today. This would have posed in no way a threat to the British Empire." Ferguson interpreted the war as following in the vein of the various continental conflicts of mid-century, chiefly the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars. 
In the American memory, the war which bled Europe white is World War I, simply the first installment in a two-part play in which the United States takes the mantle of leadership from the fratricidal Europeans. To the British, it is the Great War, its very mention resonant with waste and unsurpassed loss. In the first half-hour at the Somme in 1916, the Kitchener volunteer units lost more than 30,000 men. After months of fighting, all the Brits were able to show for the tens of thousands of dead were several miles of territory. The British launched three major campaigns involving hundreds of thousands of casualties around Ypres, in Belgium, yet were almost defeated there in 1918. Ferguson's own grandfather had fought with a volunteer Scottish brigade in the trenches; the Scots lost a staggering quarter of their number during the war. 

Throughout England, one can see the tragic lists of lives ended too young, from the halls of Oxbridge, to Victoria Station, to any parish church. Ferguson's argument, therefore, is anything but academic. It strikes at the very heart of the British commitment in the twentieth century: one of exhaustive resistance to continental domination by militarist Germans (and later Russians). By extension, it calls into question the sacrifice of several million young men whose descendants live on. His claims, therefore, deserve the utmost scrutiny. 

Ferguson's fundamental contention is that German domination of the continent would not have been inimicable to Britain and her far-flung empire. He points to records of German objectives to claim that, had the Central Powers been victorious, they would have instituted some sort of benign common market, and quotes Count von Bulow, who remarked that a German victory would have only pushed the Reich further to the political Left. (Pre-war Germany had the largest left-wing party in Europe.) 

For Ferguson, the enormous losses which Britain sustained were not commensurate with what she would have suffered in a German-dominated Europe. His argument is practical and subtle. He is not staking his position on a pacifism or ideology; instead, he bases it on a "cost-benefit analysis," in which Britain and her Empire would have been stronger had they not entered the war. 

But Ferguson's argument is ultimately unconvincing. At least since the 16th century, Britain had opposed any nation wishing to establish hegemony over the continent, battling Philip II, Louis XIV, and Napoleon for this very reason. There was a very good justification for this policy, as any power which controlled the continent could threaten England's very shores.  Indeed, each of those three rulers launched invasions (or sincerely planned to) against England - in 1588, 1690, and 1805. 

A country that controlled Europe could summon vast armies, great fleets, and abundant financing, and might cut off the vital English trade with the continent, as Napoleon tried to do with his Continental System. Britain was (and is) ultimately reliant on other powers to do most of her land fighting: she has neither the manpower nor the need to do otherwise. A nation dominant over Europe has, then, in effect defeated the British Army, which is only effective when conjoined with other nations' forces: the Dutch against Philip, the Austrians or Prussians against Louis, and almost everyone against Napoleon provide powerful examples of this fact. 

Eventually, any country which has established dominion over Europe will turn to Britain, a thorn in its side even if the British stay out of the war. The Romans, the last power to control Europe for an extended period, saw the occupation of England as an integral part of imperial stability, even after Hadrian redrew the boundaries of the empire. Britain is never safe when a single empire rules the continent. 

This, almost certainly, would have been the effect of a German victory in the Great War. That the Germans claimed they only wished to set up a peaceful "common market" is highly questionable. First of all, their power would have greatly exceeded any other nation's on the continent. When the Russians surrendered at Brest-Litovsk in early 1918, the Germans demanded a huge swath of land encompassing much of European Russia. They almost certainly would have encouraged settlement to the Eastlebensraum (as it came to be known in the Second World War) to add to the large numbers of Germans who had lived there for centuries. 

In addition, the Germans would have expanded their industrial and agricultural production, further threatening the British economy (which had been sorely tested by German competition in the early part of the century). After defeating the French, the Germans would have exercised control over Western Europe. Already weakened by the Franco-Prussian war, the French would have been effectively subdued by another German victory. The brutal conduct of the Kaiser's soldiers against the Belgians must lay to rest any rosy notions of a common market. The Germans would have been masters, not partners. 

A neutral Britain - as Ferguson freely admits - would have watched as the Central Powers crushed the French and the Russians. It was, after all, the highly-trained British Expeditionary Force that shot the invading German forces to pieces at the Mons, gaining precious time for the defense at the Marne, which in turn saved the Russians after the annihilation of their army at Tannenberg. 

With all her continental allies defeated and America unwilling to enter the fray (especially after the Brits' cowardly conduct), the Empire would soon have fallen prey to the voracious Central Powers. Wilhelmine Germany had long wanted "a place in the sun," and their Turkish allies were hardly happy with the British domination of Egypt, Aden, and other ostensibly Ottoman territories. The Germans had shown their solidarity with their Turk allies before the war by training Ottoman troops and building railroads through the Sultan's empire. Britain would have stood alone against the mighty German army and its Austrian and Turkish auxiliaries. 

Indeed Britain's record is poor even set alongside France and Russia: the Somme, Ypres, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, even Jutland, where the British Navy failed to live up to its name. It is very unlikely that Britain would have been able to hold together her tenuous and far-flung empire, one which could only survive if the intermediate points were preserved - Gibraltar, Malta, Suez, Aden, all the way to India and the East. 

Great Britain made the right and necessary choice when it declared war on the Central Powers in early August, 1914. The tragedy that ensued could not have been avoided by that late date. The time for peace between the United Kingdom and the Hohenzollerns had probably passed long ago, in 1866, when the militarist and aggressive state of Prussia warred against and defeated the Habsburg Empire. United under the Kaiser, the new Germany would prove the greatest threat to insular independence the British had ever seen. The world would have suffered far less if the Austrians had been victorious at Sadowa.