... against Britain. Britain eventually committed itself to a war against the Central powers, Germany and Austria- Hungary in 1914, this required some large changes (such as restrictions on personnel freedom) and higher taxes. However Britain could not cope with these changes in policy and therefore tried to detach itself again from Europe. It declined a formal alliance with France, and 'refused to give real authority to the new peace-keeping body, the League of Nations' (Young 1993). This seems to be the beginning of this idea about Britain being 'difficult'. So why did we reject the French Alliance, and try to distance our self from Europe? I believe we rejected the alliance and distanced ourselves due to the fact that being an island we felt that we could avoid the war due to being so isolated, and that it wasn't the fact that we were being awkward but more so the ...

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