On the second War Wednesday (July 29th) the British Foreign Minister warned the German Ambassador that the British could not be so base as not to stand by their friends if Germany attacked them without good reason. All through that night the staff of the Foreign Office were wonderfully cheered up in their own work by looking across the famous Horse Guards Parade at the Admiralty, which was ablaze with lights from roof to cellar. The usual way, after the Royal Review that ended the big fleet manoeuvres for the year, was to "demobilize" ships that had been specially "mobilized" (made ready for the front) by adding Reserve men to their nucleus crews. But this year things were different. War was in the very air. So the whole fleet was kept mobilized; and the wireless on top of the Admiralty roof was kept in constant touch with every ship and squadron all round the Seven Seas. By Friday night, the 31st, the whole Grand Fleet had steamed through the Straits of Dover into the grim North Sea and on to Scapa Flow, where it was already waiting when, four days later, it got the midnight call to arms. By the third War Wednesday (August 5th) the Germans had invaded Belgium and France; that great soldier and creator of new armies, Lord Kitchener, had replaced the civilian, Lord Haldane, at the head of the War Office; Lord French's immortal first army had just got the word _GO!_ and a German mine-layer was already at the work which cost her own life but sank the cruiser _Amphion_. Years before the first shot was fired the French and British Navies had prepared their plans for blockading the Austrians in the Adriatic and the Germans in the North Sea. The French were more than a match for the Austrians, the British more still for the Germans. But the Austrians had their whole navy together, while the Germans also had at least nine-tenths of their own. So the French and British, in their efforts to keep the seaways open for friends and closed to enemies, had to reckon with the chances of battle as well as with those of blockade. The Austrians never gave much trouble, except, like the Germans, with their submarines; and after the Italians had joined us (May 1915) the Austrian Navy was hopelessly outclassed.