German Diplomatic Documents 1871–1914 Volume 4
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- ISBN 9781032992006
- Weight: 940g
- Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 19 Mar 2025
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Originally published in English in 1931, this fourth and final volume of documents brings the reader to the brink of World War I. The despatches beg the question of whether war was inevitable and if so, could it have been postponed? The question of whether the British Empire needed to have taken part in it, and how far its action or inaction was responsible for the outbreak is also discussed.
E. T. S. Dugdale (1876–1964) chose and translated these four volumes of selections from the stupendously large collection of diplomatic documents held in Berlin after the First World War. Dugdale was a keen shot, an academic, a pipe-smoking stamp-collector, and an ardent admirer of Dickens, who for a time made the translation of German texts his métier. On leaving Balliol, he had hoped to join the British Foreign Office; and to that end in the late 1890s spent two years in Germany perfecting his grasp of German – an experience which admirably qualified him for the more literary occupation. In the event, having married in 1902, he instead became an underwriter at Lloyds, and ended the War, wounded, as a captain in the Leicester Yeomanry. The four volumes of Diplomatic Documents were Dugdale’s chefs d’œuvre. The very many and generous contemporary reviews of these are as uniformly struck by their historical importance as by the skill of their presentation and choice.
