Commons that so early as January, 1906, the French Government, after the
Morocco difficulty, had drawn his attention to the international
situation. It had informed him that it considered the danger of an
attack on France by Germany to be a real one, and had inquired whether,
in the event of an unprovoked attack, Great Britain would think that she
had so much at stake as to make her willing to join in resisting it. If
this were to be even a possible attitude for Great Britain, the French
Government had intimated to him that it was in its opinion desirable
that conversation should take place between the General Staff of France
and the newly created General Staff of Great Britain, as to the form
which military co-operation in resisting invasion of the northern
portions of France might best assume. We had a great Navy, and the
French had a great Army. But our Navy could not operate on land, and the
French Army, altho large, was not so large as that which Germany, with
her superior resources in population, commanded. Could we, then,
reconsider our military organization, so that we might be able rapidly
to dispatch, if we ever thought it necessary in our own interests, say,
100,000 men in a well-formed army, not to invade Belgium, which no one
thought of doing, but to guard the French frontier of Belgium in case
the German Army should seek to enter France in that way. If the German
attack were made farther south, where the French chain of modern
fortresses had rendered their defensive positions strong, the French
Army would then be able, set free from the difficulty of mustering in
full strength opposite the Belgian boundary, to guard the southern
frontier.

Sir Edward Grey consulted the Prime Minister, Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Asquith, and
myself as War Minister, and I was instructed, in January, 1906, a month
after assuming office, to take the examination of the question in hand.