us for tying our
hands now. We must preserve our full freedom to act as circumstances may
seem to us to require in any such unfavourable and regrettable
development of the present crisis as the Chancellor contemplates.

You should speak to the Chancellor in the above sense, and add most
earnestly that the one way of maintaining the good relations between
England and Germany is that they should continue to work together to
preserve the peace of Europe; if we succeed in this object, the mutual
relations of Germany and England will, I believe, be _ipso facto_
improved and strengthened. For that object His Majesty's Government will
work in that way with all sincerity and good-will.

And I will say this: If the peace of Europe can be preserved, and the
present crisis safely passed, my own endeavour will be to promote some
arrangement to which Germany could be a party, by which she could be
assured that no aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against
her or her allies by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or
separately. I have desired this and worked for it, as far as I could,
through the last Balkan crisis, and, Germany having a corresponding
object, our relations sensibly improved. The idea has hitherto been too
Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals, but if this present
crisis, so much more acute than any that Europe has gone through for
generations, be safely passed, I am hopeful that the relief and reaction
which will follow may make possible some more definite rapprochement
between the Powers than has been possible hitherto.

[Footnote 188: See No. 85.]

Enclosure 1 in No. 105.

_Sir Edward Grey to M. Cambon_.

My dear Ambassador, _Foreign Office, November 22_, 1912.

From time to time in recent years the French and British naval and
military experts have consulted together. It has always been understood
that such consultation does not restrict the freedom of either
Government to decide at any future time whether or not to assist the
other by armed force. We have agreed that consultation between experts
is not, and ought not to be regarded as, an engagement that commits
either Government to action in a contingency that has not arisen and may
never arise. The disposition, for instance, of the French and British
fleets respectively at the present moment is not based upon an
engagement to co-operate in war.

You have, however, pointed out that, if either Government had grave
rea