With all the recent correspondence in both this and 'in another place' about who actually won the Battle of Waterloo, I thought the following was quite apposite. It is about the British declaration of war in 1914:

'Bethmann (-Hollweg, the Imperial German Chancellor) was still hoping to avoid war with Great Britain, a hope shattered when the British ambassador that evening delivered an ultimatum from his government. Germany, along with Britain, France, Austria and Russia, had formally guaranteed Belgium's neutrality in the 1839 treaty. She must respect her pledge. Bethmann could not understand all the diplomatic fuss. The treaty was nothing more than 'a scrap of paper,' he told the British ambassador in refusing to accept the ultimatum.

Kaiser Wilhelm accepted the break as a personal insult. "This was the thanks for Waterloo," was his bitter message to his cousin, King George, to whom he returned the honorary insignia of a British field marshal and admiral of the fleet.' Walter Gorlitz, The Kaiser and his Court: The Diaries, Note books and Letters of Admiral Georg Alexander von Willer, Chief of the Naval Cabinet, 1914-1918, pp 17-18, New York, 1964, quoted in Robert Asprey, The German High Command at War: Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the First World War, p. 49, Little, Brown and Company, 1993, in paperback by Warner Books, 1994.

Notes

British Declaration of War 1914
Baring's Bank
Hofschroer: Bismarck Memorial Medal