Upon the proposition of the Commander-in-Chief
IT IS DECREED AS FOLLOWS:
(1) There are in a state of war:
1st. In the Eastern Command, the counties of Northamptonshire, Rutlandshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Middlesex (except that portion included in the London Military District).
2nd. In the Northern Command, the counties of Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, and Yorkshire, with the southern shore of the estuary of the Humber.
(2) I, Charles Leonard Spencer Cotterell, his Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for War, am charged with the execution of this Decree.
War Office, Whitehall, September the Fourth, 1910.
This proclamation was posted outside the War Office in London at noon on Wednesday, and was read by thousands. It was also posted upon the Town Hall of every city and town throughout the country.
and although we felt that things had been so carefully thought out and so splendidly arranged that the chances were almost all in our favour, yet we could not but wonder what would be the end of it all. As Von der Bendt—whom you will doubtless remember when he was in the 3rd Horse Grenadiers at Bromberg, and who is also on the Prince’s staff—said that night as he walked the deck, ‘Where would we be if, despite our precautions, the English had contrived to get wind of our intentions, and half a dozen destroyers came tearing up out of the darkness, and in among our flotilla? Our own particular future would then probably lie under the water instead of on it.’ I laughed at his croakings, but I confess I looked rather more intently at our somewhat limited horizon.