To Mobilize or Not to Mobilize? That is the question

July 31, 1914

The royal houses of Europe are trying to prevent the outbreak of a general war all over the continent. They understand that once war begins, anything can be the outcome.  But they all have foreign ministers and military chiefs-of-staff and loads of other councilors, all of whom have devoted their lives to contingency planning in case of war.  Those contingency plans and the associated international agreements make it impossible for anything to be done to prevent the coming apocalypse. 

Telegrams are flying over the last few days between the ruling houses of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia as they attempt to advise each other on how to avoid the catastrophe.  As of today, only Germany of the European powers has not yet begun to position troops and material in preparation for war.  The others are tiptoeing around trying to put the most innocuous public face on their preparations. Meanwhile, Germany is becoming acutely aware that this situation could present a major problem for her if she doesn't get with it.  Her plans for war secretly call for her to march across Belgium and into France from the north in an early prototype of what would later be called "blitzkreig".  She rather boldly attempts to "buy" British neutrality by assuring her that she will restore the borders of France and Belgium after the war which is seeming more and more inevitable.

"BELGIUM?! - who said anything about Belgium?!" wonders Great Britain.  Very quickly the answer is pretty obvious to the British military planners.