You'll never guess who wins. So there were many opportunities not to mobilize and declare war, none of which were taken. Some blamed the web of alliances itself, which is what Woodrow Wilson wanted to fix with the League of Nations. Some blamed Russia, the first big country to mobilize. Some blamed Germany for the inflexibility of the Schlieffen Plan. Leninists claimed the war grew out of imperialism and was fueled by capitalist rivalries. And others claimed it was a war between Germany's radical modernism and Britain's traditional conservatism.