PROF. BURGESS'S SECOND ARTICLE.
The Guarantee of Belgian Neutrality
So much has been said about Belgian neutrality, so much assumed, and it has been such a stumbling block in the way of any real and comprehensive understanding of the causes and purposes of the great European catastrophe, that it may be well to examine the basis of it and endeavor to get an exact idea of the scope and obligation.
Of course, we are considering here the question of guaranteed neutrality, not the ordinary neutrality enjoyed by all States not at war, when some States are at war; the difference between ordinary neutrality and guaranteed neutrality being that no State is under any obligation to defend the ordinary neutrality of any other State against infringement by a belligerent, and no belligerent is under any special obligation to observe it. Guaranteed neutrality is, therefore, purely a question of specific agreement between States.
On the 19th day of April, 1839, Belgium and Holland, which from 1815 to 1830 had formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, signed a treaty of separation from, and independence of, each other. It is in this treaty that the original pledge of Belgian neutrality is to be found. The clause of the treaty reads: "Belgium in the limits above described shall form an independent neutral State and shall be bound to observe the same neutrality toward all other States." On the same day and at the same place, (London,) a treaty, known in the history of diplomacy as the Quintuple Treaty, was signed by Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, approving and adopting the treaty between Belgium and Holland. A little later, May 11, the German Confederation, of which both Austria and Prussia were members, also ratified this treaty.
In the year 1866 the German Confederation was dissolved by the war between Austria and Prussia, occasioned by the Schleswig-Holstein question. In 1867 the North German Union was formed, of which Prussia was the leading State, while Austria and the German States south of the River Main were left out of it altogether. Did these changes render the guarantees of the Treaty of 1839 obsolete and thereby abrogate them, or at least weaken them and make them an uncertain reliance? The test of this came in the year 1870, at the beginning of hostilities between France and the North German Union. Great Britain, the power most interested in the maintenance of Belgian neutrality, seems to have had considerable apprehension about it. Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, said in the House of Commons: "I am not able to subscribe to the doctrine of those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is binding on every party to it, irrespective altogether of the particular position in which it may find itself when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises."
A One-Year Treaty.
Proceeding upon this view, the British Government then sought and procured from the French Government and from the Government of the North German Union separate but identical treaties guaranteeing with the British Government the neutrality of Belgium during the period of the war between France and the North German Union, the so-called Franco-Prussian war, which had just broken out, and for one year from the date of its termination. In these treaties it is also to be remarked that Great Britain limited the possible operation of her military force in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium to the territory of the State of Belgium.
These treaties expired in the year 1872, and the present German Empire has never signed any treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium. Moreover, between 1872 and 1914 Belgium became what is now termed a world power; that is, it reached a population of nearly 9,000,000 people, it had a well-organized, well-equipped army of over 200,000 men and powerful fortifications for its own defense; it had acquired and was holding colonies covering 1,000,000 square miles of territory, inhabited by 15,000,000 men, and it had active commerce, mediated by its own marine, with many, if not all, parts of the world. Now, these things are not at all compatible in principle with a specially guaranteed neutrality of the State which possesses them. The State which possesses them has grown out of its swaddling clothes, has arrived at the age and condition of maturity and self-protection, and has passed the age when specially guaranteed neutrality is natural.
From all these considerations, I think it extremely doubtful whether, on the first day of August, 1914, Belgium should have been considered as possessing any other kind of neutrality than the ordinary neutrality enjoyed by all States not at war, when some States are at war. In fact, it remains to be seen whether Belgium itself had not forfeited the privilege of this ordinary neutrality before a single German soldier had placed foot on Belgian soil. A few days ago I received a letter from one of the most prominent professors in the University of Berlin, who is also in close contact with the Prussian Ministry of Education, a man in whose veracity I place perfect confidence, having known him well for ten years. He writes: "Our violation of the neutrality of Belgium was prompted in part by the fact that we had convincing proof that there were French soldiers already in Belgium and that Belgium had agreed to allow the French Army to pass over its soil in case of a war between France and us." Moreover, in the British "White Paper" itself, No. 122, is to be found a dispatch from the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir E. Goschen, to Sir Edward Grey, containing these words: "It appears from what he [the German Secretary of Foreign Affairs] said that the German Government consider that certain hostile acts have already been committed by Belgium. As an instance of this, he alleged that a consignment of corn for Germany had been placed under an embargo already." The date of this dispatch is July 31, days before the Germans entered Belgium.