ABSTRACT
The Cabinet's decision to intervene in the war in August 1914 and the policies they pursued in the next two months did not represent any fundamental departure from the strategic or political principles they had evolved before the war. British strategy in the opening months of the war bore marked similarities to the policies pursued by Pitt the Younger in the 1790s. Belgium's neutrality if it was threatened by another one of the signatories of the Treaty of London. The Cabinet meetings of August were decisive. For the first time there was some concrete discussion of how British interests might be affected by a Franco-German war. In August 1914 the government's official advisers were temporarily eclipsed. The control of policy-making remained firmly in the hands of a small number of ministers, Asquith, Grey, Churchill, and the new Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener.
