The war was hours old, and the chancelleries of the world already moved like a single, anxious organism: quick, exacting, and utterly pragmatic.
Smoke rose above Ypres on the same feed that looped in the map rooms from Washington to Whitehall; dispatches came and went in a constant pulse.
The question in every capital was no longer whether to act, but how to explain why they had to.
In Whitehall, the Cabinet met in a dim room where the drizzle outside blurred the gas lamps into a single smear.
Men in coats and tired faces bent over telegrams, and when the Foreign Secretary spoke his voice was careful as a surgeon's blade.
"French columns have entered Belgium in force," he read. "Ypres is burning. Brussels has sent us urgent pleas."
The War Minister slammed his fist on the table. "It is 1914 again! The French should be ashamed."
The Foreign Secretary did not rise to the bait.
