I apologise, I wasn't clear. I meant that they wanted a war at the scale of the Franco-Prussian War. You are not wrong about the writings of the time, and ind

I apologise, I wasn't clear. I meant that they wanted a war at the scale of the Franco-Prussian War. You are not wrong about the writings of the time, and indeed, the powers themselves believed that the mere threat of such a war would prevent the war from ever actually happening, but the concessions made without firing a weapon. Imagine, a peace treaty without the actual war. This explains why Germany was trying to woe France out of going to war by suggesting that Germany would occupy some French bordering territory. Today, that would seem completely unreasonable for France to accept. But the thinking was that the economic interests between France and Germany was too important for France, that they would accept such a proposal. As for the war between Austria and Serbia, it was actually Germany that pressed Austria for the war. At first, Austria was extremely hesitant. And even after the ultimatum was sent, Austria continued to hesitate. The lack of decisive action is what allowed France and Russia to position themselves clearly in the conflict. So much that Germany was beginning to regrets its decision to promise Austria its full support in a war. And also why Germany decided to attack France and Russia first. The idea was that a quick decisive war would solve the power imbalance in Europe. The war sort of did that. But it certainly was not quick and decisive. And come to think of it, it didn't actually solve the power imbalance in Europe.