Edward Grey face the inevitable.  He says and reiterates, in effect, “You know very well that you cannot keep out of a European war.  You know you are pledged to fight Germany if Germany attacks France.  You know that your arrangments for the fight are actually made; that already the British army is commanded by a Franco-British Council of War; that there is no possible honourable retreat for you.  You know that this old man in Austria, who would have been superannuated years ago if he had been an exciseman, is resolved to make war on Servia, and sent that silly forty-eight hours ultimatum when we were all out of town so that he could begin fighting before we could get back to sit on his head.  You know that he has the Jingo mob of Vienna behind him.  You know that if he makes war, Russia must mobilize.  You know that France is bound to come in with us as you are with France.  You know that the moment we mobilize, Germany, the old man’s ally, will have only one desperate chance of victory, and that is to overwhelm our ally, France, with one superb rush of her millions, and then sweep back and meet us on the Vistula.  You know that nothing can stop this except Germany remonstrating with Austria, and insisting on the Servian case being dealt with by an international tribunal and not by war.  You know that Germany dares not do this, because her alliance with Austria is her defence against the Franco-Russian alliance, and that she does not want to do it in any case, because the Kaiser naturally has a strong class prejudice against the blowing up of Royal personages by irresponsible revolutionists, and thinks nothing too bad for Servia after the assassination of the Archduke.  There is just one chance of avoiding Armageddon:  a slender one, but worth trying.  You averted war in the Algeciras crisis, and again in the Agadir crisis, by saying you would fight.  Try it again.  The Kaiser is stiffnecked because he does not believe you are going to fight this time.  Well, convince him that you are.  The odds against him will then be so terrible that he may not dare to support the Austrian ultimatum to Servia at such a price.  And if Austria is thus forced to proceed judicially against Servia, we Russians will be satisfied; and there will be no war.”

Sir Edward could not see it.  He is a member of a Liberal Government, in a country where there is no political career for the man who does not put his party’s tenure of office before every other consideration.  What would The Daily News and The Manchester Guardian have said had he, Bismarck-like, said bluntly:  “If war once breaks out, the old score between England and Prussia will be settled, not by ambassadors’ tea parties and Areopaguses, but by blood and iron?” In vain did Sazonoff repeat, “But if you are going to fight, as you know you are, why not say so?” Sir Edward, being Sir Edward and not Winston Churchill or Lloyd George, could not admit that he was going to fight.  He might have forestalled the dying Pope and his noble