Even now, no one, including the British Cabinet and public, believed that Britain would become involved.

I have been enjoying Castles of Steel by Robert K Massie, a maritime history of World War I with an especial focus on the ground breaking (wave breaking?) deployment of Dreadnoughts.

Massie is a master of the fascinating nugget embedded within a well-told story.

Page 21. The eve of the War.

Even now, no one, including the British Cabinet and public, believed that Britain would become involved. The factor that did most to mislead the Continent was England’s imperturbable calm. Bernhard von Bülow had noticed this serene detachment some years before, when he accompanied the kaiser on a visit to England:

Many [British politicians] do not know much more of continental conditions than we do of the condition in Peru or Siam. They are also rather naive in their artless egoism. They find difficulty believing in really evil intentions in others; they are very calm, very phlegmatic, very optimistic. The country exudes wealth, comfort, content and confidence in its own power and future. The people simply cannot believe that things could ever go really wrong, either at home or abroad. With the exception of a few leading men, they work little and leave themselves time for everything.

Now England was enjoying the most beautiful August weather in many years. The holiday season had begun and the coming weekend would be prolonged by a bank holiday on Monday. Even as Russia, Austria, France, and Germany were mobilizing, English vacationers were flocking to the railway stations and the beaches. It was not surprising that foreign observers—the Germans hopefully and the French anxiously—concluded that Great Britain had determined to stand aside from the war about to engulf Europe.