Germany Declares War on France!—August 3

A quiet walk through the Belgian countryside—with a pipe!

As a first step in the war with France, German troops crossed into Belgium. Bethmann-Hollweg told the Reichstag, "The wrong…that we are committing we will endeavor to make good as soon as our military goal is reached." Nice of him to admit it, but it must have been small comfort to the Belgians as hundreds of thousands of soldiers begin tramping through their nation.

Two people who were to become famous in ways about as different as possible, were involved this day. In Munich, Adolf Hitler petitioned to enlist in a Bavarian regiment. Meanwhile, M.K. Gandhi was a passenger on a ship delayed by British mine laying in the Channel. Gandhi was coming to promote the idea that Indians living in Britain should take "their share in the war."

A significant number of the British Cabinet were not keen on going to war for France—there was no treaty, just a ten-year-old understanding, which had been drawn up to settle quarrels in Egypt and Morocco—but Belgian neutrality was different.

As dusk fell, Sir Edward Grey was looking out a window of the Foreign Office in London, watching the lamplighters light the street lamps. Memorably, he remarked to a friend, "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."