"inconceivable stupidity"...................Part one

     In his account of the origins of the First World War, the historian Max Hastings quotes an exchange that took place in 1910 between a student and the commandant of the British Army staff college.  Surely, the student suggested, only "inconceivable stupidity on the part of statesmen" could precipitate a general European war.  Brigadier-General Henry Wilson replied, "Inconceivable stupidity is just what you're going to get."

-Mervyn King,  The End of Alchemy:  Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy