In Rumors of the Great War, Nathan Orgill, of Georgia Gwinnett College, aims to show that, despite over a century of discussion on the subject, including an outpouring of studies to mark the 2014 centenary, “there is still room for something new to be said” (xv) on the crisis that culminated in the First World War and that, in particular, “the British press played a role of fundamental importance in the summer of 1914” (42). By analyzing reports and editorial comments in the British press during the crisis, Orgill argues that he has established a link between the wider public and the policy-making elite at the center of British government, who are too often treated as separate entities in discussions of the outbreak of the First World War. True, back in the 1920s, there was interest in press influence on the decision for war from some authors, but since then, even historians who have focused on popular reactions to events, whether sensing war enthusiasm or deep foreboding from the general public, have tended to see diplomatic decision making as lying in the hands of government ministers, the Foreign Office, and a few ambassadors. But Orgill shows how press barons like Lord Northcliffe (owner of several British newspapers by 1914), editors like J. A. Spender (whose Westminster Gazette was sometimes seen as a mouthpiece of the Liberal government), and journalists like Henry Wickham Steed (foreign editor of the Times) were courted by politicians and, in the days before opinion polls, seen as representing public opinion. For decades, British leaders had insisted that they required public support before they could risk committing the country to war. Thus, the press played a greater role in the war crisis than has hitherto been understood, and it is deserving of such a detailed discussion.

Looking at British decision making, the key element in Orgill's work is his closely argued investigation of the impact the press had on feeding doubts among Liberal cabinet ministers about the wisdom of going to war. Although the Times came out in favor of war in late July, followed by many other Conservative-leaning newspapers, the bulk of the Liberal press remained in favor of neutrality right down to 4 August, the day Britain declared war. In particular, Orgill factors the press into the diverse pressures working on the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, helping to make him indecisive into the first days of August, by which time Russia and France, Britain's partners in the triple entente, were desperate for his support. It is interesting, though, that leading Foreign Office officials, like the permanent undersecretary, Sir Arthur Nicolson, and the assistant undersecretary, Sir Eyre Crowe, do not seem to have been affected by worries over public opinion and themselves worked to persuade the press, including the Times, in favor of war (143). Orgill might have dwelt on this point longer.

On the international scale, the importance of this book lies in Orgill's equally detailed analysis of German decision making. He argues that such key figures as the chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, were led by British press reports to expect that London would remain neutral in the looming conflict: “had Bethmann and his advisers known how little they could count on Britain sooner, they almost surely would not have allowed Austria to push Europe to the brink” (35) by going to war with Serbia. Some of the most original parts of Orgill's book are his analyses of the attempts by Germany and its ally, Austria-Hungary, to influence the British press in their favor, with Austrian diplomats in London exploiting their links with key journalists and editors to build up a case against Serbia in mid-July and the Germans pursuing a campaign for sympathy from British correspondents in Berlin in late July. There are some interesting revelations along the way, such as the first report of Russian mobilization measure appearing as early as 26 July, in an unlikely source, the down-market News of the World. It would be useful if some future researcher could look at the efforts of Germany's enemies, Russia and France, to influence British press reports, since these two governments evidently had some success in building up support in some Conservative-leaning newspapers.

Orgill's need to explain the background to press influence sometimes means that there are several pages (160–70, for example), where there are few mentions of newspapers. There is a rare factual slip (192), where Orgill seems to believe that Winston Churchill, then a Liberal cabinet minister, met the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law: in fact, the contacts went on indirectly via Churchill's friend and Conservative MP, F. E. Smith. More might have been said on the local press and there are some odd omissions from the bibliography, not least Adam Bones's article, “British National Dailies and the Outbreak of War in 1914” (International History Review 35, no. 5 [2013]: 975–92). But it is remarkable that Orgill could write such a detailed study of an under-researched element in the July Crisis, showing that, even on a subject that has generated countless works over the last century, it is indeed possible to say something new.