An early plan to make a major effort on the Belgian coast, with the Royal Navy supporting a combined Anglo-Belgian army, foundered on Admiralty warnings that its light ships could not stand up to German coastal artillery and that its battleships could not be risked in such confined waters.19 Plans to use troops against the Austrians were shown to be equally unrealistic. Militarily weak though Austria-Hungary was, geographically it was almost unapproachable by a maritime power.
