These men are facing each other because of a document signed in 1839. The Treaty of London, 19 April that year, guaranteed the independence and neutrality of the new Kingdom of Belgium — Article VII required Belgium to be perpetually neutral, and Britain, Prussia, France, Austria and Russia all put their names to it. Seventy-five years later, on 31 July 1914, the Belgian king reminded Europe that those signatures still stood. Germany crossed the border on the night of 3 August anyway. Britain's ultimatum went unanswered, and Britain was at war the next day. The German Chancellor could not believe it: all of this, he said, over a scrap of paper.

Tradition has done something unusual and put both sides in one box. Four British in soft service caps; four Germans in Pickelhauben with field-grey covers over the spike — a helmet with about eighteen months of life left in it. The German officer points, the British officer has his revolver out, a bugler is sounding. Nobody in the set has a steel helmet, because nobody had one yet. In a diorama it separates into the British of 1914 and the Germans of 1914, but it is better whole. And the Minerva armoured car is what Belgium actually had to put in the way.

Tradition of London model 818. 54mm, white metal, hand-painted in gloss enamel. Eight-figure set — four British and four German infantry, August 1914. Supplied in the Tradition Classic Red Box. Allow 2–3 weeks delivery.