Britain rejects Germany's neutrality proposal

On 30 July 1914 the British Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, replied to a proposal that Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had put to the British ambassador in Berlin the previous evening. Germany wanted to secure the neutrality of Great Britain in the event of war with France and Russia, promising in return not to take any French territory in Europe. Grey’s answer was unequivocal: the British government could not for a moment entertain a commitment to neutrality on such terms.

Grey explained why the offer was unacceptable. In effect, the Chancellor was asking London to stand idly by while Germany took France’s colonies and defeated it in war. France could be so weakened that, even without losing territory in Europe, it would cease to be a great power and fall under German domination. In Grey’s view, making such a bargain at France’s expense would be a disgrace from which the country’s good name would never recover.

The question of Belgium was just as important. The German proposal in essence meant that Britain would have to bargain away its obligations under the guarantee of Belgian neutrality laid down in the Treaty of London of 1839. Grey stressed that London had to keep its hands entirely free on this matter.

The refusal did not, however, break off the talks. Grey gave an assurance that if the peace of Europe could be preserved, he would work towards an arrangement giving Germany and its allies a guarantee that France, Russia and Britain would pursue no hostile policy towards them. First, though, the approaching war had to be stopped.

As early as the night of 29–30 July, after receiving Grey’s warning passed on by the ambassador in London, Bethmann Hollweg began pressing Vienna to accept mediation. He wrote that Germany would not allow itself to be dragged lightly into a world conflagration. By then, however, it was too late to change course: that same day Tsar Nicholas II agreed to the general mobilisation of the Russian army.