Those who invoke the authority of Gladstone should remember that he also said:
We have an interest in the independence of Belgium which is wider than that which we may have in the literal operation of the guarantee. It is found in the answer to the question whether, under the circumstances of the case, this country, endowed as it is with influence and power, would quietly stand by and witness the perpetration of the direst crime that ever stained the pages of history, and thus become participators in the sin.
These words of the great statesman read as a prophecy.
While these treaties were simply declaratory of the rights, which Belgium independently enjoyed as a sovereign nation, yet this solemn guarantee of the great Powers of Europe was so effective that even in 1870, when France and Germany were locked in vital conflict, and the question arose whether Prussia would disregard her treaty obligation, the Iron Chancellor, who ordinarily did not permit moral considerations to warp his political policies, wrote to the Belgian minister in Berlin on July 22, 1870:
In confirmation of my verbal assurance, I have the honor to give in writing a declaration, which, in view of the treaties in force, is quite superfluous, that the Confederation of the North and its allies (Germany) will respect the neutrality of Belgium on the understanding of course that it is respected by the other belligerent.
At that time, Belgium had so fine a sense of honor, that although it was not inconsistent with the principles of international law, yet in order to discharge her obligations of neutrality in the spirit as well as the letter, she restricted the clear legal right of her people to supply arms and ammunition to the combatants, thus construing the treaty to her own disadvantage.
It can be added to the credit of both France and Prussia that in their great struggle of 1870-71, each scrupulously respected that neutrality, and France carried out her obligations to such an extreme that although Napoleon and his army could have at one time escaped from Sedan into Belgium, and renewed the attack and possibly—although not probably—saved France, if they had seen fit to violate that neutrality, rather than break the word of France the Emperor Napoleon and his army consented to the crowning humiliation of Sedan.
In the year 1911, in the course of a discussion in Belgium in respect to the fortifications at Flushing, certain Dutch newspapers asserted that in the event of a Franco-German war, the neutrality of Belgium would be violated by Germany. It was then suggested that if a declaration were made to the contrary in the Reichstag, that such a declaration, “would be calculated to appease public opinion and to calm its suspicions.”
This situation was communicated to the present German Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, who instructed the German Ambassador at Brussels to assure the Belgian Foreign Minister,