According to British historian John C. G. Röhl: February 1912 is rightly regarded as a decisive event in the years leading up to the First World War.
Seldom was the incompatibility between Great Britain’s balance-of-power policy of maintaining the status quo and the German Reich’s claim to the leadership of continental Europe so strikingly displayed.
Britain depended heavily on the superiority of the Royal Navy to defend the home islands and the entire British Empire.
[3] The 1911 Agadir Crisis had been a diplomatic disaster for Berlin, leading to accurate fears among the German government that the British would side with France in any war against Germany.
)[4] The Tirpitz Plan was taking half the defence budget, and even so Britain maintained a dominance in naval power.
The Germany army was the basis of its wartime strength, and pro-army advocates finally began to mobilize and demand a bigger budget.
German-born London financier Ernest Cassel was a close friend of both Britain's King Edward VII and Albert Ballin, head of the Hamburg-America Line, the world's largest steamship company.
[8] A memorandum was prepared by Sir Edward Grey, Winston Churchill, and Lloyd George for the British Cabinet.
Upon reading the British proposals, Bethmann Hollweg and the Kaiser were willing to cut the naval expansion to achieve it, despite the strong protests by Admiral Tirpitz.
The Germans therefore invited a senior British diplomat and Haldane was sent, arriving on February 7 just as the Kaiser was announcing in vague terms the new naval budget that Tirpitz wanted.