lfilled our contract, for at eleven o'clock on Monday
morning, August 3, 1914, we mobilized without a hitch the whole of the
Expeditionary Force, amounting to six divisions and nearly two cavalry
divisions, and began its transport over the Channel when war was
declared thirty-six hours later. We also at the same time successfully
mobilized the Territorial Force and other units, the whole amounting to
over half a million men. The Navy was already in its war stations, and
there was no delay at all in putting what we had prepared into
operation.

I speak of this with direct knowledge, for as the Prime Minister, who
was holding temporarily the seals of the War Secretary, was overwhelmed
with business, he asked me, tho I had then become Lord Chancellor, to go
to the War Office and give directions for the mobilization of the
machinery with which I was so familiar, and I did this on the morning of
Monday, August 3, and a day later handed it over, in working order, to
Lord Kitchener.

I now return to what was the main object of British foreign policy
between 1905 and 1914, the prevention of the danger of any outbreak
with Germany. Sir Edward Grey worked strenuously with this well-defined
object. If France were overrun, our island security would be at least
diminished, and he had, therefore, in addition to his anxiety to avert a
general war, a direct national interest to strive for, in the
preservation of peace between Germany and France. Ever since the
mutilation which the latter country had suffered, as the outcome of the
War of 1870, she had felt sore, and her relations with Germany were not
easy. But she did not seek a war of revenge. It would have been too full
of risk even if she had not desired peace, the Franco-Russian Dual
Alliance notwithstanding. The notion of an encirclement of Germany,
excepting in defense against aggression by Germany herself, existed only
in the minds of nervous Germans. Still, there was suspicion, and the
question was, how to get rid of it.

I have already referred to the visit I paid to the Emperor at Berlin in
the autumn of 1906. He invited me to a review which he held of his
troops there, and in the course of it rode up to the carriage in which I
was seated and said, "A splendid machine I have in this army, Mr.
Haldane; now isn't it so? And what could I do without it, situated as I
am between the Russians and the French? But the French are your
allies--are they not? So I beg pardon."

I s