erhmmm ... WROONG
There were additionally two cabinet meetings on Saturday, one on Sunday (
not sure atm on which day were the 2 meetings, could be vice versa) and one on Monday morning even before Edward Greays oh so known speech before the house.
There were the publication of the russian general mobilisation, the answering general mobilisation of Germany and the notorious ultimatum to Belgium (
as well as the for the Brits as such even named irrelevant occupation of Luxembourg).
Whatever "description" you've read : it seems to be simply ... flawed (to be polite).
An IMHO
very good despription (well sourced be numerous contemporary notes, diaries, letters of all involved british politicians) can give you this reading. It also quite clearly gives you the rather 1/4 (
if even as much) to 3/4 distribution within the cabinet between "hawks" (
in earnest only churchill and Grey could be named as such, Asquith was - if at all - "in" only for staying with Grey but not out og on conviction, Haldane was NOT a hawk but rather a 'wait-for-the-right-moment-AFTER-the first clashes and ... well that's it for the 'hawks' : 2 fully and 2 halfhearted at best) and "doves" (
or better framed non-military-non interventionists ...
the remaining 17 cabinet members IIRC) as well as the almost even split within the conservativs between non- and interventionists (
against oh so often claimed 'certain pro-war-conservatives' myth intensly nursed and propagated since 3rd August 1914 continuesly until today) and the struggle within the conservative party for the position finally taken.
(Just to name a single book. There are several other writings well worth reading in addition and for details on single topics.)
Well said!
(Reminds me to finally getting around to reading Newton soon.)
British belligerency in the 1914 of our timeline was anything but a slam dunk; and as it was, it was one of the most favorable scenarios for getting Britain into a continental war in the Edwardian era. In a scenario where Germany never builds the High Seas Fleet (or at least, anything remotely as robust as th HSF of our timeline), British belligerency becomes more difficult to obtain.
I am going to indulge myself by digging up
something I wrote on another WW1 thread a couple years ago here: "Too often, we operate in broad strokes when discussing the British decision-making, when it took a very particular set of developments - I would say, machinations - to get a Liberal-governed Britain to a declaration of war. There was nothing inevitable about it."
a) Asquith's cabinet was a pacifist-dominated Liberal cabinet in 1914. And when I say "pacifist," I do not mean it in a George Lansbury sense. It might be better to say "non-interventionist" for our purposes. It was probably in the neighborhood of about 15 to 5 - with the five interventionists/hawks being Grey, Churchill (at the hard end), Haldane, Asquith, and - marginally - Lloyd George. At the other end, the most opposed to war could be identified in the four Liberal ministers who resigned over the decision for war (Beauchamp, Morley, Burns, and Simon - Asquith did of course later manage to persuade Beauchamp and Simon to rescind their resignations). So it is quite remarkable that Edward Grey was able to maneuver a mostly non-interventionist Cabinet to agree to a decision that would take Britain into war, even with his unusually close relationship with Asquith to lean on.
b) The key decisions were taken on Sunday, August 2, the date of the German ultimatum to Brussels. There were two Cabinet meetings that day: 1) one from 11:00am-2:00pm, and a second from 6:30-8:00pm. In the first, the Cabinet voted that a stance that a German naval bombardment of French Channel ports would be a trigger for war. In the second, it was also decided that a violation of Belgian neutrality would be a trigger, too. These were the conditions that the majority decided would be necessary for thm to support war, not a declaration of war itself - but even so, they provided the necessary tripwires when the time came for Kaiser Willie to trip them. Note that the prospect of the HSF cruising the Channel blowing up stuff was the first and easiest "get" for the Cabinet - not Belgian neutrality.
c) Something else noteworthy happened on Sunday, August 2, that mattered a great deal. Bonar Law and Lansdowne delivered a letter to Asquith promising "unhesitating" support for the government in any measures it sought to employ in support of the Dual Alliance. This promise was bolstered by Churchill's reading, before the Cabinet, of a letter from prominent Tory F. E. Smith saying that a canvas of his colleagues permitted him to say that "the government can rely upon the support of the Unionist party, in whatever manner that support can be most effectively given." The italics are mine. It became apparent that the prospect now loomed of a national government, one which could well be mostly Tory: a prospect that chilled Asquith, and most ministers present. This had the effect of nudging wavering ministers into the agreement to a "Belgian" formula in the evening. It acted, it seems, as a kind of unspoken threat by Asquith. This wasn't just for crass self-intrested reasons (though these can't be ruled out), but also because Asquith and his ministers mostly thought the Tories were irresponsible madmen who could not be trusted with running a war.
d) Even so, it took the news of Belgium's refusal of the ultimatum, and German bellicosity, on the following two days to shore up the waverers - to give not just them, but the public, the cover they felt they needed to go to war for what really were other reasons - unwillingness to allow the German fleet in the Channel, and fear of Liberal government being replaced by a de facto Tory dominated government. And since the German fleet did *not* make that appearance, it really did come down to a need for Germany to violate Belgian neutrality to close the deal.
). 
