Count Walterskirchen, of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office, was deputed the following morning to bring me my passport and to acquaint me with the arrangements made for my departure that evening (August 14th). In the course of the day Countess Berchtold and other ladies of Vienna society called to take leave of Lady de Bunsen at the Embassy. We left the railway station by special train for the Swiss frontier at 7 p.m. No disagreeable incidents occurred. Count Walterskirchen was present at the station on behalf of Count Berchtold. The journey was necessarily slow, owing to the encumbered state of the line. We reached Buchs, on the Swiss frontier, early in the morning of August 17th. At the first halting place there had been some hooting and stone throwing on the part of the entraining troops and station officials, but no inconvenience was caused, and at the other large stations on our route we found that ample measures had been taken to preserve us from molestation as well as to provide us with food. I was left in no doubt that the Austro-Hungarian Government had desired that the journey should be performed under the most comfortable conditions possible, and that I should receive on my departure all the marks of consideration due to his Majesty’s representative. I was accompanied by my own family and the entire staff of the Embassy, for whose untiring zeal and efficient help in trying times I desire to express my sincere thanks. Germany’s first care, once Russia and France had been provoked to take up arms, was to make British neutrality quite secure. It had been relied upon from the very inception of the German plan down to the moment[27] when Sir Edward Grey delivered his telling speech in the House of Commons. British neutrality was an unquestioned postulate which lay at the very root of the scheme engineered by the Empire-builders of Berlin. And they clung to it throughout with the tenacity of drowning men holding on to a frozen plank in Polar seas. CHAPTER IX BRITISH NEUTRALITY AND BELLIGERENCY