When Diplomacy Fails presents a master's dissertation by Zach Twomley The conclusion

The ultimate vindication of honour is physical violence

Julian Pitt Rivers, historian and political The ultimate vindication of honour is physical violence.

Julian Pitt Rivers, historian and political scientist, 1965.

Does honour answer the question of why Britain went to war?

One could assert that it contributes to the other studies that have sought to answer this question.

Honor was as valuable a commodity, as security and imperial interests. Indeed, to someone was inseparable from these two entities. To lose honor meant to lose standing in the eyes of one's

rivals, meant the mass disobedience of one's subjects, and the gauntlet of challenges,

suddenly provided by rivals and friends alike that could sense inherent weakness.

Such losses incurred, shame, and the drop in prestige that would inevitably follow.

Britain's diplomatic credibility could also be damaged, possibly threatening her ability to make alliances in Europe.

Fear of such consequences had been enough, as we have seen, to mobilize some statesmen and newspapers to advocate for a certain course from an early stage.

For others, the question was a more personal one, but no less significant because of that.

Interventionists had been loathed to claim the damage to the empire's name

that would be done if France, expectant of aid, was crushed and eliminated from the sovereign

map of Europe. The question of obligation or non-obligation to France

was something that those on both sides of the ideological fence grappled with.

In many ways this was the confusion of the British cabinet's own making.

The people in statesmen were told that no written obligations existed,

and yet the situation in place because of previous

agreements suggested or to some it automatically resulted, in obligations of an honorary, moral

nature. To those opposed to war, Russia's moral conduct and ideological backwardness loomed,

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