One hundred years ago today, Germany declared war on France. This come two days after she declared war on Russia in support of Austria-Hungary, which has been in a state of war since July 28th. It's not clear to me why Germany declared war other than it expected war to happen in any case so went ahead with it. She mumbled something to France about "aviators throwing bombs" at her and then opened fire. Actually I just read an article from a couple of days ago that the French and Germans had already had a go at each other, but hardly the stuff that would lead to millions of war dead. Needless to say the French never apologized for the imaginary aviators so war it was.
At the same time Germany invaded Luxembourg. One might already be aware of how small a country Luxembourg is so it's not unreasonable to assume Germany had completed its invasion before it finished telling Luxembourg they were even coming.
War between France and Germany may be seen as a given, although diplomatic efforts to avoid conflict continued until the very end. The real question that hung in the balance was what was the United Kingdom going to do during all this. The United Kingdom itself wasn't too sure about this either and left the decision to Germany. The UK might join the hostilities if Germany invaded Belgium or attacked the northern coast of France.
And so we come to little Albert sitting alone in his neutral realm. It was only just yesterday that Germany announced its intentions to walk through Belgium, like so many field of poppy. Today, Belgium would officially say... Well... You know what she would officially say.
And so to tomorrow.
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