attitude and manner upon discovering that Russia would indeed fight
rather than suffer the proposed humiliation, agreed that it was the
attitude and manner of an anxious man. The ultimatum to France had,
upon the contrary, not the marks of coercion, but of unexpected and
violent haste. If Russia was really going to fight, what could Prussia
be sure of in the West? It was the second great and crude blunder of
Prussian diplomacy that, instead of making any efforts to detach
France from Russia, it first took the abandonment of Russia by France
for granted, and then, with extreme precipitancy, asked within the
least possible delay whether France would fight. That precipitancy
alone lent to the demand a form which ensured the exact opposite of
what Prussia desired.

This double misconception of the effect of her diplomatic action
dates, I say, from Friday, the 31st of July, and that day is the true
opening day of the great war. Upon Sunday, the 2nd of August, the
German army violated the neutrality of Luxembourg, seizing the railway
passing through that State into France, and pouring into its neutral
territory her covering troops. On the same day, the French general
mobilization was ordered; the French military authorities having lost,
through the double action of Germany, about five days out of, say,
eleven--nearly half the mobilization margin--by which space of time
German preparations were now ahead of theirs.

There followed, before the action state of general European conflict,
the third German blunder, perhaps the most momentous, and certainly
the most extraordinary: that by which Germany secured the hitherto
exceedingly uncertain intervention of England against herself.

Of all the great Powers involved, Great Britain had most doubtfully to