When Diplomacy Fails presents the July Crisis Anniversary Project, a day-by-day account of the events that occurred 100 years ago.

The Turn of Britain.

Today is the 2nd of August 2014, and on this day in history a hundred years ago, occurred the following events.

Now what? That was the question on the lips of Kaiser Wilhelm II's advisers, as he went to bed shattered over the news on the night

of the 1st of August 1914. Britain would not guarantee French neutrality after all, and Germany

would now have to fight the Franco-Russian Entente just as Germany's strategic planners had envisioned

since 1894. The scenario was a nightmare, especially with the British lurking suggestively in the background,

and despite the fact that Germany had been armed since that time with the Schlefen plan.

So euphoric had the mood been in the Kaiser's late meeting that Champagne was had to celebrate the incredible news,

when it emerged that Sir Edward Gray, the Foreign

Secretary for Britain, had managed to somehow confuse what was possible with what was promised.

Berlin sighed in resignation, though its mobilisation was beginning to whirl into gear. As news

of the Declaration of War reached the front pages of newspapers across Europe and became the

talk of its

statesmen, the very men that had signed the order and drafted up the declaration now seemed

to pause for thought. It was as if, after being so close to war against a single foe, German

mood now had to come down from the high and sober up to face reality. But what was the reality?

The German ambassador to Russia had been meant to hand the declaration of war to Russia's

foreign minister at 5pm, and yet it was now 2am,

and still no word had come from St. Petersburg about whether they accepted the state of war

or what the Russians thought about it.

Certainly, the German Chancellor Bethmann-Holwig expected some kind of reaction,

...