In the first half of 1912 came the sending of Sir Ernest Cassel with a verbal note in which England offered to remain neutral in case of an "unprovoked" attack upon Germany, provided Germany agreed to limit her naval construction programme and to drop her new Naval bill, the latter being darkly hinted at. Owing to our favourable answer to this Lord Haldane was entrusted with the negotiations and sent to Berlin. The negotiations finally fell through owing to the constantly more' uncompromising attitude of England (Sir E. Grey), who finally disavowed Lord Haldane and with-dress his own verbal note, because Grey was afraid to offend the French by a German-English agreement and jeopardize the Anglo-French-Russian understanding.
Here are the details of the case:
On the morning of January 29, j912, Herr Ballin had himself announced to me at the palace in Berlin and asked for an audience, I assumed that it was a case of a belated birthday greeting, therefore I was not a little astonished when Ballin, after a short speech of congratulation, said that he had come as an emissary of Sir Ernest Cassel, who had just arrived in Berlin on a special mission and wished to be received.
I asked whether it-was a politico] matter, and why, if so, the meeting had not been arranged through the Ballin fetched Cassel, who handed me a document which, he stated, had been prepared with the "approval and knowledge of the English Government." I read the short note through and was not a little surprised to see that I was holding jin my hand a formal offer of neutrality in case Germany involved in future warlike complications, conditioned upon certain limitations in the carrying out of our programme of naval construction, which were to be the subject of mutual conferences and agreements. Walking with Ballin into the next room, I handed over the document for him to read. After he had done so both of us exclaimed in the same breath: 'A verbal note It was plainly apparent that this "verbal note" was aimed at the forthcoming addition to our naval Jaw and designed ju some way to delay or frustrate it. No matter how the matter was interpreted, I found myself confronted with a peculiar situation, which also amazed Ballin. It reminded me' of the situation at Kronberg-Friedrichshof in 1905, when I was obliged to decline the demand, made to me personally by the English Under Secretary, Hardinge, that we should forgo our naval construction.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.