Geopolitically yes, it would be very stupid not to oppose Germany from becoming a European hegemon.
WW1 was an expensive war in both blood and treasure. Let the European powers exhaust themselves and reap the benefits of their stupidity.
They had close to a million dead, went broke, fought a worse war 25 years later, went even more broke, lost their empire, and became dependent on the US. Millions of your colonial subjects died in the second war. Both sides resort to attempts to strangle the civilian population in order to win.
If your goal is to maintain the empire it failed. If your goal is to maintain some kind of long term peace it failed. If your goal is to remain first among the Great Powers it failed. If your goal is maintain British 1914 social structure it failed.
Who cares if Germany becomes dominant? At worst you establish a special relationship with them as their greatest ally, similar to their OTL relationship with the US or EU. Germany might not even become dominant. Russia bounced back from an even worse period than Germany in WWI to become the number two power. Germany might need two years to win the war and find itself exhausted for the next decade while you grow richer selling to both sides.
What do you think a dominant Germany would have been like? They would have probably ended up with a big portion of France's Navy and would have had the full resources of Mitteleuropa to build up a fleet to challenge Britain. Add to that them becoming a much more attractive partner to countries like the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, Italy, etc. a border/probably ports much closer to Britain, and new colonies that could support greater force projection globally. If the Germans had stomped France and Russia, they would be in a position to challenge and defeat the last remaining power that could stand in the way of their hegemony in Europe, and based on the mentality of the Kaiserreich they almost without a doubt would have done so. Imagine what a Germany like that with its other European allies, a fully functional Berlin to Baghdad Railway, a navy on level with the RN, that amount of resources and force projection, etc. could have done to Britain.
I agree which is why I think that even if the Germans didn't attack through Belgium the British would have found some reason to join the war. Morality was irrelevant to the decision to enter the war for the government.
You fundamentally misunderstand the entire basis of British foreign policy since 1453 if you think that is a reasonable statement.
A "dominant" Germany in Europe means, by definition, an economically destroyed Britain. This is why Britain - belatedly - intervened in the Napoleonic Wars. Once a European power established themselves as hegemon, trade barriers are erected to disadvantage Britain.
There is no reasonable scenario where a triumphant Germany allows British exports to Europe to continue at the same terms as they were before. A triumphant Germany - especially one exhausted by the economic strain of war - will establish an economic system reminiscent of the Continental System...or, without straying to far into chattish territory...a similarly constructed system of European-wide trade and economic policies.
Either Britain enters the fight in 1914, it enters later on less favourable terms once the Germans have surrounded Paris, or it enters into a highly damaging economic war with the new European hegemon, which leads to a separate confrontation where Britain is even more disadvantaged.
All roads lead to war, I'm afraid.
The British are lucky that the war didn’t go completely straight for them.If WW1 was a short decisive victory,it would have resulted in a super Russia more powerful than the Germans could have dream of.
And then the British could have played them off against the other powers on the continent like France, the remainder of Germany, the Ottomans, etc.
This is why Britain went with a policy of preventing any one continental power from getting too powerful, they always made sure it wasn't going to be one power vs. them.
So, we need
1: Germany to win
2: The German Empire‘s domination to last
3: The German Empire to decide to Britain is a foe
4: Germany to decide locking Britain out of trade to be worth the cost of losing a major trade partner
5: The German Empire to not change its mind
6: The German Empires domination of Europe to include a broad degree of control over
trade, not just taking land or calling for reparations.
7: The amount of trade lost exceeds the virtual shutdown of the civilian economy during the war and OTL interwar protectionism.
8: The amount of trade Britain loses to be enough to collapse the economy
9: This collapse outweighs the ludicrous cost of WWI
10: The economy does not bounce back after a decade, as tends to happen with countries with strong institutions and human capital.
11: Europe’s economy does not end up under the dominance of the US or Russia anyways.
12: This makes up for the death toll, trauma, and loss of freedom the war represented.
The Germans literally explicitly planned to do all of that in their Mitteleuropa plan, cut the UK out of continental trade, maintain land control of the areas they took, etc. And if there's anything that is obvious about Kaiser Wilhelm II, the guy who's going to be running the show until at least the 1940s, he wasn't the sort who would change his mind on anything and he was an extremely aggressive militarist to boot.
The only way Britain could have managed to beat the resulting military buildup and loss of trade in this scenario would be to pursue a policy of economic integration with the U.S. plus taking massive loans from them that would have made them even more dependent than IOTL, and it would still leave them in a whole lot of danger from Germany.
