The German note has been a painful surprise to the Belgian Government. The intentions which the note attributes to France are in contradiction to the formal declarations which were made to us on the 1st of August in the name of the republic. Besides, if contrary to our expectations, France is about to violate the neutrality of Belgium, Belgium would be prepared to fulfil its neutrality obligations, and her army would offer to the invader the most vigorous resistance. The treaties of 1839, confirmed by the treaties of 1870, commit to the guarantee of the powers and notably to the Government of his Majesty the King of Prussia the independence and neutrality of the Kingdom of Belgium.

The Chancellor of the German Empire said in a sitting of the Reichstag on the 4th of August:

We are in a state of legitimate defense Necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and have perhaps already penetrated into Belgium. This is against the law of nations. France, it is true, has declared to Brussels that she is determined to respect the neutrality of Belgium as long as her adversary respects it, but we know that France was ready to invade Belgium. France can afford to wait; we cannot. A French attack on our flank in the region of the lower Rhine might have been fatal. It is for that reason we have been compelled to ignore the just protests of the Governments of Luxemburg and Belgium. The injustice which we thus commit we will repair as soon as our military object has been attained.

It has been shown how much value can be attached to the assertion of the alleged intention of France to invade Belgium. That intention, and the realization of that intention belongs exclusively to Germany and they must be left in her possession. This is especially the case in view of the fact that the military dispositions undertaken by France absolutely refute the allegations of the German Chancellor. So true is this that when the violation of Belgian territory became an accomplished fact, and when the King of Belgium appealed under the terms of the treaty of 1839 for support, in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium which these powers had guaranteed, France was so little prepared to invade Belgium that it took her more than ten days to get her troops into the country.

The world is familiar with the way Germany has repaired in Belgium the injustice of which she was guilty, to use the words of the German Chancellor.

Atrocities in Belgium.

Under the pretext that her troops were attacked by civilians, and even under no pretext at all, whole villages have been razed to the ground. Important towns whose boast it was to represent part of the common inheritance of civilization were not spared. Their monuments, which have been respected during the centuries in all of the constant wars of which Belgium has been the theatre, were deliberately destroyed. Open cities were bombarded. Exorbitant taxation was imposed upon conquered towns, and when the inhabitants were unable to pay the taxes, a large number of their houses were set on fire. That is what happened to Wavre, among other cities, whose 8,500 inhabitants were unable to pay a tax of $600,000. Termonde, with 10,000 inhabitants, was utterly destroyed. On the 15th of September, there only remained in that town 282 houses out of 1,400. The town of Aerschot, with 8,000 inhabitants, is now nothing but a mass of ruins and more than 150 of its inhabitants have been shot. Dirigible balloons have thrown bombs at night upon Antwerp. It cannot be maintained by those who were in the balloons that they were trying to hit the forts, as the forts are outside the boundaries of the town, and a good distance outside them as well. Nor could the bombs thrown have had any effect upon the forts, which are even stronger than those of Liége. There was no warning of this bombardment, a fact which constitutes a violation of Article 26 of the Fourth Convention of The Hague, and more than a dozen people were killed, all of them non-combatants and several of them women and children.

The town of Louvain, with its 42,000 inhabitants, was one of the centres of Belgian culture. It had no mercy shown to it and has been nearly obliterated. Several quarters of the town were set on fire, the Church of St. Pierre, a marvelous example of Gothic art; the buildings of the University, including the Library with more than 70,000 volumes, of which a large number were ancient manuscripts, the collections belonging to the University; nearly all the scientific institutions, and nearly all the houses of the town were deliberately burned. They are now nothing more than heaps of ashes. Their destruction has been a loss to the whole civilized world.

Numbers of absolutely innocent women and children lost their lives in the fire which was started by order of the German military officials. Of those who were saved, several thousand, including women enfeebled by age, and children in arms, are today wandering homeless over the roads, without food or clothing. They are not to blame for anything, unless it is because they belong to a nation which has refused to purchase peace at the price of dishonor. That can be the only crime accounted to them and it is for that they have lost all their possessions upon the earth.

From the declaration made by the Imperial German Chancellor it may be seen that the German Government is conscious of its wrongdoing. As one of the guarantors of Belgium's neutrality, it wanted to force Belgium to relinquish its neutrality for Germany's benefit. Because Belgium would not consent to this injustice and because Germany could not reproach her with anything else, Germany invaded and covered with blood and ruin a small peaceful country of hard-working and honest people, a country which it had promised to protect.