The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28th June, 1914, did not immediately cause a reaction amongst members of the British government. David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pointed out that the Cabinet, although it was meeting twice a day, because of the crisis in Ireland, they did not even discuss the issue of Serbia and the assassination for another three weeks.
H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister, took little interest in the event as at the time he was obsessed with his latest mistress, Venetia Stanley. In a letter to Stanley on 30th June he mentioned the assassination without expressing fears about the international complications which might follow. Colonel Edward House, President Woodrow Wilson's special envoy, who was touring Europe at the time was dismayed to find Asquith was unworried by the prospect of war.