The limits of Anglo-German naval rapprochement

British distrust of Imperial Russia left some prominent Britons willing to consider closer relations with Germany before the war. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance had itself been shaped by concern about Russia. A serious rapprochement would nevertheless require concrete German assurances, such as scrapping pre-dreadnoughts without immediately replacing them and moderating the naval race. Those concessions remain unlikely in this counterfactual. Fisher's commemoration and a massed naval gun salute offer a more plausible chance to make British strength and resolve visible without producing a full diplomatic realignment.