In 1832 a new era began. This land, a marvel of human industry, where beautiful cities rich in monuments of art and devotion had sprung up amid ancient swamps; a land turned by patient labour from a desolation into a garden, was at length assured of peace. It was happy in the choice of public-spirited rulers. With unsparing energy and devotion to the common good, Leopold the First threw himself into the work of repairing the heavy ravages of war. He promoted the first railway on the Continent of Europe. He encouraged industry and education. He fostered commerce. Under his wise government the roads of Belgium became the best in Europe. The navigable waterways and canals were improved until they reached a total of over 1,000 miles. The rich mineral resources of the country were opened up. The work thus begun by the first King of the Belgians has been continued by his successors. No record of public spirit and public service has added greater lustre to a Royal House. “The people of Belgium,” said an English statesman, “have been governed with wisdom, with fairness, and with due regard to their national character, and they reward such treatment by devoted loyalty to their king and firm attachment to their constitution.”
The decision now taken still to put freedom first meant undoing all the results laboriously won during nearly eighty years of tranquillity. Yet neither King Albert nor his Ministers wavered. And the Belgian people were as firm as they. With Englishmen the love of liberty is commonly passive. They feel their freedom to be secure. Only when challenged does their love of freedom flame into passion. But the Belgians know that their freedom lives under challenge. The shadow of Prussian conscription lay athwart their door. That iron and materialistic system which takes its steady toll of a country’s manhood, and crushes national spirit like a Chinese boot, has been the dread of Belgium, as it has been the dread of Holland for a generation. It was not forgotten that the designs of Prussia upon Belgium were no idea of yesterday. More than five months elapsed before diplomatic pressure brought Prussia in 1832 to put her name to the “scrap of paper” she has now repudiated. Count von Moltke made a special study of Belgium and Holland as of Poland. The inference is obvious. Had it not been for the firm front shown by Great Britain in 1870, the German occupation of Belgium would long ago have been an accomplished fact.
In 1870 Prussia did not feel herself strong enough to face France and Great Britain alone. Elated by the unexpected results of the war of 1870, and attributing them wholly to her own prowess instead of largely to the unpreparedness of France, her designs against the Netherlands were revived. Not France was the obstacle feared, but Great Britain. If we are to seek for the true reason of the anti-British spirit fostered in Germany, and certainly not discountenanced by official influence, it will be found in Great Britain standing in the way of this design. Colonies and welt-politik were the open talk of Pan-Germanism, but expansion east and west on the Continent of Europe was the definite objective of the plans so minutely prepared at Berlin; and of the costly and extensive apparatus of espionage spread like a network over Europe. This was the dream of riches before the eyes of the German subaltern as he ate the meal of a few pence which his “Spartan poverty” compelled him to take in a cheap café, and puzzled how to live without falling into debt.
We need not search far for evidence. If the reader looks at the map of western Germany he will see that a bunch of railway-lines stretch to half a dozen points of the compass east of Aix-la-Chapelle like the extended fingers of a hand. They link Aix with eastern, northern, and southern Germany. Now Aix is not a great commercial centre. It is merely a watering-place. There is no more reason why Aix should be a huge railway-centre with vast sidings, and miles of platforms than, say, Wiesbaden. But these are not commercial railways. So far as ordinary traffic goes their construction represents almost a dead loss.
The railways are military and strategical. Regarding their construction one or two interesting facts have to be noted. The first is that their construction began just after the Boer War broke out; was almost coincident indeed with the famous telegram of the Kaiser on British reverses. The second fact is that the surveys, plans, and estimates for these railways must have been made long before, and been waiting in a pigeon-hole for a convenient opportunity.
Now ever since the days of the Great Elector Frederick William the affairs of Prussia have been administered with an economy which might almost be called parsimony. It is utterly foreign to Prussian spirit and tradition to spend millions of money without very good reason for it. Remarkably enough, another bunch of these railways, equally without ordinary traffic, converge upon the frontier of Holland.
Just, as Scharnhorst was the inventor of the German universal service system, and von Hindersin the organiser of their artillery, so von Moltke was perhaps the first military man who appreciated thoroughly the importance of railways in war, and their value in that rapid hurling of masses of troops into a hostile country before its defence can be put upon a war-footing, which is the corner-stone of German strategy.
No doubt, then, can be entertained as to the true object of these railway enterprises. That they were not undertaken until it was believed Great Britain had ceased to be a serious obstacle, at all events in a land campaign, is confirmed by the nearly coincident change in naval policy which led Germany into heavy ship-building programmes. Great Britain was still a serious obstacle at sea. Therefore a navy had to be built big enough to render her acquiescent. Great Britain acquiescent, and Austria compliant, France and Russia, the remaining signatories to the Guarantee, might be dealt with, it was thought, without fear of the result.
The outlay was heavy, but the hoped-for return was great. The Netherlands are a rich prize. Not merely their industrious and ingenious population, but their taxable capacity would make the German Empire easily the head State of Europe. If Holland has not the valuable coal and iron mines of Belgium, she has an important mercantile marine, and most valuable colonies, including a possession in India. The economic importance of the Netherlands to Germany, and possession of the ports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Antwerp, is manifest. A vast expansion of over-sea trade; a host of new and lucrative employments for German bureaucrats, made this sacrifice by a parsimonious people seem well worth while.
But there are other considerations. Belgium has been the cockpit of Europe, because Belgium, as a military base, has almost unrivalled advantages. Possession or occupation of Belgium—they are much the same thing—means command of its wealth of resources, and of its 3,400 or more miles of excellent main roads. Seizure of these is a great weight in the scale. A powerful army based on Belgium dominates France and more especially Paris. France could be reduced by it to a state of tutelage. Conversely, of course, a great French army based on Belgium would have the Lower Rhine at its mercy, and could “bottle up” Germany more effectively even than a blockade of her coast. That was, in part, how Napoleon held down Prussia. Plainly the neutrality and independence of Belgium is the one common-sense solution; and not less plainly the interests of Great Britain are vitally involved.