After proclaiming to the world that the German Foreign Office had discovered in Brussels certain secret documents, which disclosed the fact that the neutrality of Belgium at the time of the invasion was a sham and after the civilized world had refused to accept this bald and unsupported assertion, as it had also refused to accept the spurious evidence of a well-known Arctic explorer, the German Foreign Office in December, 1914 published its alleged proofs.
The first purported to be a report of the Chief of the Belgian General Staff to the Minister of War and reported his conversations in 1906 with a military attaché of the British Legation in Brussels.
The second purported to be a report of similar conversations in 1912 between the same officials.
In an authorized statement, published on January 27, 1915, Sir Edward Grey states that there is no record of either of these negotiations in the English Foreign Office or the War Office; but this fact is not in itself conclusive and as there is no evidence that the documents were forged, their genuineness should be assumed in the absence of some more specific denial.
The documents, however, do not appreciably advance the cause of Germany, for they disclose on their face that the conversations were not binding on the Governments of England or Belgium but were simply an informal exchange of view between the officials, and what is far more to the purpose, the whole of the first conversation of April 10, 1906, was expressly based upon the statement that “the entry of the English into Belgium would take place only after the violation of our neutrality by Germany.”
The second document also shows that the Belgian Chief of Staff expressly stated that any invasion of Belgium by England, made to repel a prior German invasion, could not take place without the express consent of Belgium, to be given when the occasion arose, and it is further evident that the statement of the English military attaché—clearly a subordinate official to define the foreign policy of a great Empire—expressly predicated his assumption, that England might disembark troops in Belgium, upon the statement that its object would be to repel a German invasion of Belgian territory.
If it be asked why England and Belgium were thus in 1906 and 1912 considering the contingency of a German invasion of Belgium and the method of effectually repelling it, the reply is obvious that such invasion, in the event of a war between Germany and France, was a commonplace of German military strategists. Of this purpose they made little, if any, concealment. The construction by Germany of numerous strategic railway lines on the Belgian frontier, which were out of proportion to the economic necessity of the territory, gave to Europe some indication of Germany’s purpose and there could have been little doubt as to such intention, if Germany had not, through its Foreign Office, given, as previously shown, repeated and continuous assurances to Belgium that such was not its intention.
The German Chancellor—whose stupendous blunders of speech and action in this crisis will be the marvel of posterity—has further attempted to correct his record by two equally disingenuous defenses. Speaking to the Reichstag on December 2, 1914, he said:
When on the 4th of August I referred to the wrong which we were doing in marching through Belgium, it was not yet known for certain whether the Brussels Government in the hour of need would not decide after all to spare the country and to retire to Antwerp under protest. You remember that, after the occupation of Liége, at the request of our army leaders I repeated the offer to the Belgian Government. For military reasons it was absolutely imperative that at the time, about the 4th of August, the possibility for such a development should be kept open. Even then the guilt of the Belgian Government was apparent from many a sign, although I had not yet any positive documentary proofs at my disposal.