My reading of World War One - from Martin Gilbert's history and Correlli Barnett's "The Swordbearers" - is that talking might possibly have worked if only the talkers had been given long enough. That, however, was when many of the European nations were ruled by the same set of first cousins and had as much in common as they had differences.

In addition, there were only political ideology and self-interest to consider: there was no intransigent, entrenched fanaticism. And for all that the German Army behaved terribly in Belgium, people strapping bombs to themselves and deliberately detonating them amidst women and children shopping or leaving church would have been condemned universally on both sides. This is the sort of enemy with whom the only dialogue possible is highly supersonic and weighs somewhere between four and nine grams.