Generations of European-history students have been taught that a political assassination caused the First World War. Without some qualification, however, this teaching is bound to mislead, since the war would not have happened without the treaties and alliances that were already in effect and the military force that was already amassed. These were the deeper causes of the war, whereas the assassination was a cause only in a trivial sense. It was like the individual spark that happens to ignite a conflagration that was, in the prevailing conditions, inevitable. Which one of the following most accurately restates the main point of the passage? ['Though the statement that the assassination caused the war is true, the term "cause"more fundamentally applies to the conditions that made it possible for that event to start the war.', 'Although the conditions prevailing at the time the war started made war inevitable, if the war had not been triggered by the assassination it would not have taken the course with which students of history are familiar.', 'The assassination did not cause the war, since the assassination was only the last in a chain of events leading up to the war, each of which had equal claim to being called its "cause. "', 'The war was destined to happen, since the course of history up to that point could not have been altered.']