The Haldane Mission of February 1912 was an unsuccessful effort to seek détente with Germany and reduce dangerous friction between Britain and Germany arising because of their escalating naval arms race. According to British historian John C. G. Röhl: February 1912 is rightly regarded as a decisive event in the years leading up to the First World War. Seldom was the incompatibility between Great Britain’s balance-of-power policy of maintaining the status quo and the German Reich’s claim to the leadership of continental Europe so strikingly displayed.