> The Europeans mostly ignored it because it was far away This is totally wrong. A myth made up by nationalist American historians. This played into larger 'mi

> The Europeans mostly ignored it because it was far away This is totally wrong. A myth made up by nationalist American historians. This played into larger 'military all idiots' narrative that was popularized after WW1. However it is incorrect in multiple ways. First of all, the European military did observe the war quite a bit and had officers write up a lot of leanings. However much of that was already very old and outdated by WW1. The Russia-Japan war and the British-Boar war were far in terms of learning for WW1. These were observed as well. The everybody predicted 'short war' narrative taught in popular history is not really all that correct.