[Pablo]

Originally Posted by moscowexile

When I said that the British Empire was the raison d'etre of the Royal Navy, I had in mind the twice-as-big-as-the-next-two-combined-fleets navy patrolling the sinews of British seaborne free enterpise trade and not King Harold the Great of Wessex's or Elizabeth I's wooden walls.

Hi!

My point was that the Royal Navy's raison d'etre was to protect Britain from invasion, long before there was a British Empire. The Empire came about because of British naval superiority, not the other way 'round.

'We are entering a general European conflict because of German beastliness in its rape of poor little Belgium" was the cry of the British government in August 1914 and I still maintain that it was largely propagandist in nature: witness the British political cartoons of the time.

Hmm... You might want to review Foreign Minister Grey's speech to Parliament on August 3, 1914, where he outlined why a German attack on Belgium would be sufficient reason to enter the war against Germany, and the Parliament agreed.

Furthermore, Britain's noble defence of Belgium neutrality in 1914 was contradicted somewhat by the Salonika expedition of 1915 when French and British forces landed in Greece in order to bolster up Serbia by attacking Bulgaria. In that year, Serbia, whilst having bravely defended herself against the Austro-Hungarian Empire (the Serbs suffered the greatest losses in relation to population size of any participant in World War I), faced imminent defeat after having been attacked by Bulgaria, which had joined the Central Powers in order to expand, at Serbia's expense, in the Balkans. Problem was: Greece was neutral. Lloyd George disingeniously argued at the time that "there was no comparison between going through Greece and the German passage through Belgium."

Actually, Lloyd George was correct: the troops landed in Salonika at the request of the pro-Allied Greek Prime Minister, Elefthérios Venizélos. It is true that Greece was not of one mind on this question, since King Constantine I was pro-German, and that the resulting disagreement and all that followed is known in Greece as the "National Schism" (Εθνικός Διχασμός, Ethnikos Dikhasmos), but the offer was made by the Prime Minister and legitimate head of government.

The all too prescient Jackie Fisher hit the nail right on the head at the beginning of the 20th century when asked for a possible date for the outbreak of a general European conflict: his answer was that a general European war would start when the Kiel canal had been widened to facilitate the passage of dreadnoughts. He was almost spot on in his prediction. The canal widening began in 1907: it was completed in June 1914. A Royal Navy squadron was invited to the re-opening of the widened canal by Kaiser Wilhelm II, a grandson of Queen Victoria. The celebrations were cut short by the announcement of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg Empire, in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist.

The Royal Navy squadron promptly left Kiel to take up war stations. On leaving Kiel the squadron signalled to the Kaiser and his fleet: Friends today; friends in future; friends forever.

It was my understanding that the Royal Navy's Second Battle Squadron left Kiel to continue its scheduled cruise through the Baltic, and returned to Britain for the annual royal review by King George V on July 20, followed by fleet exercises. The Royal Navy did not begin moving to its war stations (i.e., Scapa Flow) until July 28-29, after Austria had publicly rejected Serbia's response to its ultimatum and was mobilizing for war.

Pablo