On the afternoon of August 3, 1914, two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany declares war on France, advancing with a long-standing strategy, conceived by the former Chief of Staff of the German Army, Alfred von Schlieffen, for a two-front war against France and Russia. Hours later, France makes its own declaration of war against Germany, preparing its troops to move to the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which they had handed over to Germany in the settlement that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.
With Germany officially at war with France and Russia, a conflict originally centered in the tumultuous region of the Balkans, in the wake of the assassination of Austrian archbishop Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and the subsequent confrontation between Austria-Hungary, Serbia and Russia, Serbia's powerful Slavic supporter, had erupted in a large-scale war. Also on August 3, the first wave of German troops met on the border of neutral Belgium, which according to the Schlieffen Plan would be passed by German troops on their way to an invasion of France.
The previous day, Germany had presented Belgium and its sovereign, King Albert, an ultimatum demanding the passage of the German army through its territory. This threat to Belgium, whose perpetual neutrality had been ordered by a treaty celebrated by European powers, including Britain, France and Germany in 1839, joined a divided British government in opposition to German aggression.
Hours before Germany's declaration of war on France on August 3, British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Gray appeared before Parliament and convinced a divided British government, and a nation, to support Britain's entry into the war if Germany violated Belgian neutrality.

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