Well... I would argue that the rulers of Europe had accepted the Social Darwinism idea that because of natural selection and the survival of the fittest, war between the different "species" of Europe was inevitable. They saw Germans, French, British, Austrians, and Russians as different "species." So the assassination of Franz Ferdinand merely gave the rulers of Europe a chance to get the inevitable over with. Or at least get it started, maybe the Brits hoped the French and Germans would kill each other off quickly and that's why they sent such a small BEF to the Continent before the war.
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"Only the dead have seen the end of war."
Plato
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