III.—The Crime Against Belgium

The case of Belgium is marked by the tremendous simplicity which characterises almost everything in human affairs that can be called really great. The choice put to her was a choice between right and wrong, so naked and clear, so stripped of all ambiguities, all subintents and saving-clauses as to resemble rather a battle between spiritual principles than a concrete situation in contemporary politics. And, further, Belgium was and till the end of time remains the touchstone of German Kultur. For generations the masters of Prussia had been elaborating a coherent doctrine of domination to be attained through scientific brutality. It is one of the sins of democracy to have thrust that doctrine out of its thoughts, whenever it so much as heard of it, as being too bad to be true, for the foul thing was meant down to its worst word. All the world knows now that although Prussia is not to be believed when she promises fidelity, she is most thoroughly to be believed when she threatens murder; it was assigned to Belgium that in her blood this discovery should be proclaimed, not to be forgotten while men live.

Belgium is the test by which every issue in this war stands or falls. The late Judge Adams used to relate how he once set up for a horse-stealer a complicated and eloquent defence ranging from the French Revolution to the Irish Land System. The Judge listened patiently to the last word of the ringing peroration, and then observed: “Very good, Mr. Adams, very good! But tell me now: Why did your client steal the horse?” In the same way you will hear your Prussian or pro-Prussian rambling on about the Slav menace to German “culture,” about the secret designs of France, and the robber Empire of Great Britain. To get to the heart of this question you have only to say: “Very fine, no doubt. Something in it, perhaps! But tell us now, why did your German friend break his solemn guarantee, and violate the frontier of neutral independent Belgium?” That trivial arrow is enough to bring to earth the Zeppelin of his Welt-Politik, with its whole cargo of metaphysics.

There was no illusion to cloud the minds of King Albert or his Government. The King knew his Kaiser; he had already been menaced by him, and his Chief of Staff von Moltke, in an interview reported by M. Jules Cambon nine months before the war (French Yellow Book, No. 6). He had had every opportunity afforded him of studying the gospel according to Krupp. He knew that, when the ultimatum was delivered at Brussels, the German Army of the Lower Rhine was already massed and was marching on Liége, and that no help could possibly reach him from France or England before the 42 cm.’s had ample time to batter his eastern defences to pieces. He knew also how inadequate were his own military resources; a scheme of reorganisation that would have enabled Belgium to put in the field an army of defence of a million men had indeed been formulated, but was not yet in operation. Every German and pro-German influence in the country was invoked to induce him to break his treaty obligations, and stand aside. The Social Democrats publicly and shamelessly appealed to their Belgian “comrades” to rise superior to “that bourgeois idea, honour.” But the King and his Government held fast.

The position of Belgium was as clear as it was terrible. One sometimes hears ill-informed people speak as if the neutrality of that country had been a matter of its own choice, from which it could depart by a new act of choice. This, of course, was not the case. Neutrality was imposed on Belgium, as the price and the correlative of guaranteed independence, by the five Powers whose signatures will be found appended to the treaties of 1831 and 1839. Situated at the cross-roads of Europe, Belgium had by the deliberate policy of Europe been established as a buffer-state, a buffer by land between France and Germany, and by sea between England and the heart of the Continent. Her neutrality was not a commodity to bargain with, but a fundamental condition of her independence; it was her formal duty to preserve it, or at least attempt to preserve it, by force of arms against any invasion. Should any of the guarantors assail it the others were bound to come to its defence. It has been suggested that both France and Great Britain were very ill-prepared to fulfil this obligation; German writers have, indeed, tauntingly gloated over the fact, for it is a fact. The bad faith of Germany was so long evident—her very army manœuvres having been, in fact, based on the hypothesis of a rapid invasion of Belgium—that defensive measures were plainly called for. But two points must be remembered. For one thing, the moral question remains unaltered. You do not justify a murderer by saying that the police ought to have been there to prevent him committing the crime. For another, any new defensive organisation adopted would certainly have been represented by Germany as a clear proof of intended aggression, and would in all likelihood have precipitated the outbreak.

It is necessary to bear all these circumstances in mind in order to appreciate at its full worth the heroic decision of Belgium. Deliberately, with the courage not of hot blood but of conscience and honour, she lost the world in order to gain her own soul. In the treachery of Germany there was lacking not even one episodical baseness. Her representatives lied up to the last moment. Two hours before he presented his ultimatum the German Minister at Brussels issued a message of reassurance through the columns of Le Soir; well do I remember how avidly the citizens of Brussels not so much bought as tore out of the hands of the newsboys that issue of the 2nd of August with Herr von Below Saleske’s message, and the sigh of relief that followed the reading of it. He employed an image the sinister fitness of which we did not then suspect.

“I have not done so, and personally I do not see any reason why I should have done so, seeing that it was superfluous. The view has always been accepted by us that the neutrality of Belgium will not be violated. If the French Minister had made a formal declaration to that effect it is doubtless because he wished to reinforce obvious fact by some words of reassurance. The German troops will not march over Belgian territory. We are on the eve of grave events. Perhaps you will see your neighbor’s house on fire, but the flames will spare yours.”

The vision of burning towns has come to have a sinister fitness.

We know now that already, on the 31st of July, Germany had declined to give any undertaking to respect Belgian neutrality because any reply to the British demand made in that sense “could not but disclose a certain amount of their plan of campaign in the event of war ensuing.” There is no more illuminating phrase in the whole body of correspondence. The violation, it thus plainly appears, was no improvisation under stress of circumstances; on the contrary, it had long since been assumed as a postulate by the German General Staff in the drafting of their war-plan. The declaration of war by a guaranteering Great Power on a guaranteed small nation is a thing so infrequent, it is such a salient in the long line of iniquity, that it must once again be quoted in full. Any guardian in private life who finds himself reluctantly compelled in the interests of a higher morality to murder his ward, any trustee obliged by Notwehr to steal the trust-property, may well enrol it among his forms and precedents. It was delivered at Brussels at seven o’clock on the evening of the 2nd of August. It is worth noting that it was drawn up in German, by way of compliment, no doubt, to the “Teutonic kinship” of Belgium—

“(Very confidential.)