Berlin for this purpose early in 1912 and Winston
Churchill, first lord of the admiralty, called for
a ‘naval holiday’ in 1913 – all came to nothing.
The German ministers, in return, had demanded
that Britain should tie its hands in advance and
promise to remain neutral if Germany went to war
with France. The Germans continued to be
warned that Britain, in its own interests, would
stand by France if France found itself attacked
by the numerically superior German military
machine. This threat, rather than Germany’s naval
challenge, motivated British policy. As Grey put
it in 1912, Britain was in no danger of being
involved in a war ‘unless there is some Power,
or group of Powers in Europe which has the
ambition of achieving... the Napoleonic policy’.
The British government knew that it possessed
the resources to keep pace with any increase in
Germany’s naval construction. By 1914 Britain
had twenty new super-battleships of the dread-
nought class, against Germany’s thirteen; in older
battleships Britain’s superiority was even greater –
twenty-six to Germany’s twelve. By making
arrangements with France to concentrate this fleet
in home waters, leaving the Mediterranean to be
defended by the French fleet, British naval superi-
ority over Germany was assured and, also signifi-
cantly, its ties with France were strengthened.
Still trying at the same time to assure Germany
of Britain’s general goodwill, Grey concluded two
agreements with it in 1913 and 1914. The first,
a rather dubious one, divided up two Portuguese
colonies in Africa, Mozambique and Angola,
allowing Germany a good share should Portugal
choose to dispose of these possessions. The other
agreement helped Germany to realise plans for
the final sections of the Berlin–Baghdad railway
project and so facilitated German commercial
penetration of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. It
was concluded on the very eve of the outbreak of
war in Europe.
Grey endeavoured to steer a difficult middle
path. He had met the Russian threat by the agree-
ments of 1907, just as his predecessor in the
Foreign Office, Lord Lansdowne, had removed
the imperial rivalry with France in 1904 by a
general settlement. But the British never thought
that agreements with Russia, unlike the French
settlement, would allow more than breathing
space from its inexorable pressure. Yet, in every
one of these agreements made to protect Britain’s
empire there was a price which the British
Cabinet would have preferred not to pay. To
protect its enormous stake in China, Britain had
concluded the alliance with Japan in 1902 sanc-
tioning Japanese aggression in Korea and making
war in eastern Asia with Russia more likely. After
Japan’s victory in 1904–5, Japan was set on the
road to dominate China. Then there was the
agreement with France over Morocco and Egypt
in 1904, which was bound to offend Germany.
Britain would have preferred to appease Germany
by allowing it a share of Morocco. The French
would not allow that. So Britain once more
gained its imperial objective – predominance in
Egypt – at the cost of increasing tensions in
Europe. The most striking example of Britain
protecting its empire at the cost of international
tension was the settlement reached with Russia.
With the conclusion of this agreement with
Russia in 1907 over spheres of influence in the
Middle East, Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign
secretary, well understood that the Germans
would increasingly feel ‘encircled’.
The question that has to be asked is why, if
Russia continued to be considered even after
1907 to present the main threat to the heart of
the British Empire in Asia, did Britain go to war
with Germany in 1914? There were no direct
Anglo-German territorial disputes or differences
over spheres of influence that were not capable of
settlement. It is not easy to answer that question
but there are clues in what Grey wrote and said.
Agreement with Russia rather than enmity
bought time. Then, looking to the future, how
could Britain best maintain its position as a great
power in Europe? It certainly wanted the peace
of Europe to be maintained. But Grey feared that
Britain might be faced with too powerful a com-
bination of countries in Europe in coalition
against it. However, he also repeatedly warned
against Britain becoming dependent on Germany.
Britain’s distrust of Germany was certainly
growing in the Edwardian period. The kaiser was
regarded as over-emotional and unstable. German
manufacturers were competing with the British in
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THE BRITISH EMPIRE 39
