Why Did Britain Go to War in 1914?

“It is difficult, if not impossible” to answer the question of why the First World War broke out argues Robert Pearce in a 1997 article. Similarly, to point out the exact reason why Britain joined the war in August 1914 is a difficult task. In The Realities behind Diplomacy, Paul Kennedy comments “there was no inevitable path to war”. There are long term reasons British could have entered such as the 1839 Treaty of London where Belgium was guaranteed neutrality; seventy-five years before the war broke out and some thirty-two years before Germany even existed. Likewise there are short term causes in the preceding months before the war; the July crisis being the most obvious of these. However, both these long and short term events could be argued to come down to one idea; Britain’s strive for a ‘balance of power’.  Germany was a rising power; in 1870 Britain had led the world in steel production with 0.7 million tonnes produced, Germany with only 0.3. By 1910 Germany’s production rate had risen to 13.8 million tonnes with Britain way behind on 5.9 million. Britain saw her as the biggest threat to the balance that had been established, and had to stop the country becoming too powerful and ruining the balance.

Britain’s relationship with Germany was fickle in the years prior to the war; in 1900 the majority of the Cabinet were seeking an Anglo-German accord however this began to deteriorate and by 1907 the likelihood of Britain siding with France in the event of war was more likely. One of the finest examples of this increasing rivalry is the naval race that took place. Germany adopted what Christopher Ray calls a ‘risk-fleet theory’; the country aimed to have a navy large enough to pose a threat to Britain was it involved in a third party conflict. This destroyed Britain’s ‘two power standard’; the idea that Britain’s navy should be bigger than the next two largest navies combined. While in 1898, the German navy was the seventh largest in the world, its growing size suggested that Britain’s previously held naval superiority would be destroyed and the balance of power shifted. The race reached its peak with the invention of the HMS Dreadnought. The Dreadnought effectively made all other battleships obsolete (including Britain’s older Battleships) and when Germany responded with her own version of the ship, a new stage was reached in the race.  Frank McDonough argues that by having a strong Navy, Germany hoped Britain would adopt neutrality in the case of war; however Britain saw the growing navy as a threat. Geographically, Germany was the biggest threat; neither American nor Japanese fleet expansion threatened Britain and it made sense for the British to become allies with America in the Western hemisphere and Japan in the East. However, as Robert Pearce argues the naval race was over by 1912, Germany concentrated on creating a large army. Therefore the naval race cannot be seen as a direct reason for Britain’s entry to the Great War. It did, however, begin to show Germany as a rising power and thus a threat.