The Crimes of England

What Chesterton does is examine the history of England going back several centuries and finds that it was too favorably impressed by the Germans, as opposed to the French, Irish, and other European peoples. This was published after the First World War had already begun, and its author is trying to see what errors led to this conflagration. Instead of seeing the typical historical causes -- the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the desire of Austria to punish the Serbs, the huge military and naval buildup by the Germans -- he sees a weakness in his country of essentially having the wrong friends.