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Though called a world war, the war of 1914-18 was, largely a European conflict which due to the increasingly intricate inter-relationships of modem life had repercussions far beyond its actual locale. While offering an unmistakable indication that in all spheres of man's activity an event occurring in any part of the world has a greater or lesser effect upon all other parts, that war was yet essentially a provincial war compared to the global conflict in which Alaska and Madagascar, Hunan province and Dakar, the Solomon Islands and the Caucasus, Norway and the Caribbean Sea are locked in the intricate maze of grand strategy. Upon students of history the effect of the earlier conflict was for the most part restricted to a search after causes or origins. The aim varied from that of placing the blame upon one nation or group of nations to the more philosophical effort to relate the already generally accepted concepts of nineteenth century history, industrialism, imperialism, nationalism, democracy, etc., into some pattern such that the inevitable result would appear to be the conflict which followed.