Continental Divides

One thing we may safely say is that none of the European powers would have embarked on the war if they had known how it would be waged, what its cost would be and how it would end: in exile for the kaiser, death for the czar and his family, over 1.3 million dead for the French. As for the British, Jarausch says, they “wanted to eliminate German competition without too much upsetting the balance of power on the continent,” though in fact they failed to eliminate the competition while utterly upsetting the balance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/books/review/out-of-ashes-by-konrad-h-jarausch.html?_r=0