Quote Originally Posted by Simon Appleton
Good point. It's interesting that when Serbia was finally being overrun, the Austrian General Conrad wrote a memo to the Emperor (on 22nd October 1915) raising the possibility of a peace settlement with the existing structure of Europe being kept in tact. However, the British historian Martin Gilbert comments:

The imminence of victory was a time for boasting and advancing, not for reflection and compromise.

On the same day as the Austrians were considering peace, Gilbert cites the Kaiser warning the American Ambassador James Gerard:

"America had better look out after this war"
I agree, those sentences describe correctly the spirit that ruled European countries in that time.

It can be seen clearly with Wilson’s propositions for peace, they were first rejected by Germany, then accepted by the allies but only after being rejected by the Germans, which put them again on the table as a last option in the last weeks of the war, when the US army had became the major actor of the war in Europe.

All those were only attempts not to lose the war as peace never appeared as an acceptable solution, that would make acceptable the sacrifices needed to reach it.