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4 August: Difference between revisions
→Events preceding British Declaration of War: john redmond speech link
The Great War>Borderman (→1914: add sir edward grey address (and link to speech) in the house of commons) |
The Great War>Borderman (→Events preceding British Declaration of War: john redmond speech link) |
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*Chancellor [[von Bethmann-Hollweg]]'s speech in Reichstag, acknowledging they are doing wrong.<ref>From the Chancellor's speech: "...A French inroad on our [[flank]] on the Lower Rhine would have been fatal to us. So we were forced to set aside the just protests of the [[Luxemburg]] and Belgian Governments. The wrong – I speak openly – the wrong that we now do we will try to make good again as soon as our military ends have been reached. When one is threatened as we are, and all is at stake, one can only think of how one can hack one's way out..."</ref>
*[[Sir Edward Grey]] wires to [[Sir Edward Goschen]] telling him that unless satisfactory German assurances ''re'' Belgian neutrality are forthcoming, he is to ask for his passports.
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*Sir Edward Grey [[Great Speeches of the War/Grey|addresses the House of Commons]] with a rousing speech where he announces the position and intentions of the Government with reference to the War.<ref name="gsw" />
*At 7 p.m. the ''{{wl|Berliner Tageblatt}}'' flaring placards through the city, states: "Great Britain breaks off diplomatic relations."<ref>The shock was admittedly, for one moment, paralyzing. That which the greater part of the population had believed impossible from reasons of British domestic policy, and improbable because of their sublime faith in British selfishness, had happened. The childish chatter about the unity of the Germanic race, which no sane observer of Prussian manners could ever have seriously believed, was probably less responsible for the outrageous treatment of English-speaking people throughout Germany than the sudden angry realization of the fact that the press and the foreign office had alike utterly misled public opinion regarding the actual unpreparedness of England for any war; and the bitter word "Betrayed," which was on thousands of lips in [[Berlin]] on the night of 4 August, was directed as much against German diplomacy as against supposed English treachery.
</ref><ref>{{Hammerton|volume=1|volume-title=How Germany Welcomed the War|pageno=[[A Popular History of The Great War/Volume 1/Page 107|107]]}}</ref>
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