Britain went to war in 1914 because a handful of belligerent political leaders in Berlin exploited the murder of the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand to pursue Germany’s long-held desire to be a world power: their machinations, deviousness, obfuscations and at times ineptitude and delusions, led Britain’s leaders after considerable efforts at mediation, to go to war with Germany, after they had invaded neutral Belgium.