Abstract
These agreements also marked a move in European politics. Foreign minister Theophile Delcasse intended that they should lead on to an alliance with Britain, to strengthen the French position against Germany. The British did not intend to go down that road, and Lord Lansdowne was not prepared to incur the formal obligations of an alliance with France. But during the very next year, 1905, Lansdowne himself proposed close consultation with the French, directed against Germany. His successor as foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, made the entente with France the basis of his policy. Secret military staff conversations worked out detailed arrangements to send a British expeditionary force to France in the event of war with Germany, and naval talks agreed that the French fleet should hold the western Mediterranean while the Royal Navy concentrated on the North Sea. The possibility of war against Germany on the side of France was well in sight, though by no means certain.
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