[SeeSharp]

The English listened to Wagner, Germans savored Shakespeare, Russian aristocrats mimicked the French, Mozart and Italian opera were loved by all.

You could travel from London to Vladivostok without a passport, and your money was good everywhere because it was redeemable in specie. Yep. They blew it up.

[C19fan]

The author AJP Taylor in the intro to one of his books “English History 1914-1945” described life in England at the eve of the Great War as what a libertarian would describe as almost a utopia. All that ended with the Great War.

[Oberon]

Take away the hero-worship of the military culture fostered in the German principalities, and petulant, foolish children like Kaiser Wilhelm II would never have come along... or, having existed, would not be able to lead their continent into the first-ever war on an industrial scale.