Germany and England have undertaken all steps to avoid a European war. ... [W]e have lost control and the landslide has begun, As a political leader I am not abandoning my hope and my attempts to keep the peace as long as my démarche in Vienna has not been rejected.
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Speech to the Prussian Ministry of State (30 July 1914), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 69