Based on Barbara Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize-winning history, this compilation film draws the background of the first days of World War I. Beginning with the abdication of Edward VII, the film traces the events leading to global conflict through the lives of Czar Nicholas of Russia, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, and Emperor Franz Josef of Austria. Then rare documentary footage of the outbreak of war and the invasion of France is shown, including a stunning sequence on the Parisian taxi-cap army — 600 taxis that rushed 6000 badly needed troops to the Battle of the Marne.