Neutrality of Belgium

“ We have great and vital interests in the independence—and integrity is the least part—of Belgium. If Belgium is compelled to submit to allow her neutrality to be violated, of course the situation is clear. Even if by agreement she admitted the violation of her neutrality, it is clear she could only do so under duress. The smaller States in that region of Europe ask but one thing. Their one desire is that they should be left alone and independent. The one thing they fear is, I think, not so much that their integrity but that their independence should be interfered with. ”

“ For the steady extension of neutralization appears to us to be one of the surest ways of the progressive elimination of war from the face of the earth. All these considerations take on a more imperative cogency when the treaty rights of a small people are threatened by a great world power. We therefore believe that when Germany refused to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which she herself had guaranteed, Great Britain had no option, either in international law or in Christian ethics, but to defend the people of Belgium. ”

“ She does not want to be a pawn in a game. She wants her territory to be the expression of her own free life. To stand for her neutrality is to stand for her sovereignty, and to assert herself. Belgium might utterly perish, but in doing so, she would have asserted herself, and she would rather die in that magnificent self-assertion than to be the tool of another. ”

“ Such was the significant comment of the German Chancellor on Great Britain’s determination to uphold the neutrality of Belgium. A scrap of paper! This phrase, applied to a binding treaty, is destined to stick like a Nessus’ shirt to the memory of its author, his imperial inspirer, and their country until such time as the militarism which originated it has been consumed without residue. It is a Satanic sneer hurled with fell purpose into a world of civilized human beings. No such powerful dissolvent of organized society has been devised since men first began to aggregate. ”

“ Britain, for her own absolute safety, has always required and still requires Belgian neutrality to be respected. And that by itself is a sufficient, and the most honest, reason. But in the eyes of the world at large Germany's deliberate and determined sacrifice of Belgium, simply because the latter stood in the way of the rapid accomplishment of her warlike designs against France (and England) , can never be condoned—little Belgium who had never harmed or offended Germany in any way. ”

“ But we pay the penalty of this action on behalf of peace for ourselves, and possibly for others in the future, by forfeiting our right to do anything on behalf of peace for the Belgians in the present. We can maintain our neutrality only by refusal to do anything to aid unoffending weak powers which are dragged into the gulf of bloodshed and misery through no fault of their own. Of course it would be folly to jump into the gulf ourselves to no good purpose; and very probably nothing that we could have done would have helped Belgium. ”

“ Not France, who violated Belgian neutrality with impunity in 1870, and who, if she now is ready in time, will, in her anxiety to fight the Germans outside the French frontier, assuredly violate it again—if, indeed, 70the act can be termed violation when the neutrality is virtually dead already by Belgium’s own act. In eastern Europe there is other business on hand just now, than solicitude for the protection of Belgian neutrality. ”

“ If the war was inevitable, someone should surely have benefited by it materially. Belgium, a pawn on the board of inevitability, has been dragged from the conflict of the great powers and restored for a few years at least to the number of small nations; and all who went to the succour of Belgium may feel that they risked the world to gain their own souls. Nevertheless, if Belgian neutrality was indeed but the occasion of a war which the great powers could no longer avoid and if no one of them is richer, stronger, safer, healthier or happier, it would have been better not to undertake it ”

“ Germany’s recognition of the continuing obligation of this treaty was also shown when the question of Belgium’s neutrality was suggested at a debate in the Reichstag on April 29, 1913. In the course of that debate a member of the Social Democratic Party said:
In Belgium the approach of a Franco-German war is viewed with apprehension, because it is feared that Germany will not respect Belgian neutrality. ”

“ This was followed by the fortification of the Meuse, but it is said that the Belgians have not enough troops to garrison these newly-made defences. It has been publicly admitted in Belgium that their national force is not sufficient to defend a violation of neutrality against France and Germany, therefore Belgium must regard the first violator of her neutrality as her national enemy, and will be obliged to ally herself with a nation which is an enemy of the state which has violated neutrality. ”

“ The violation of Belgian neutrality is bad enough, but if you begin to lull Belgium to slumber by repeating, on every occasion, that she has nothing to fear, and if you end by declaring to the civilised world that Belgium was plotting with England and France a traitorous attack against Germany, then it becomes quite plausible. ”

“ It will remain a vital British interest after the war, as it was before it, to prevent Germany from obtaining access to the Belgian coasts. Recent events have shown conclusively that that interest is not effectively safeguarded by treaties providing for Belgian neutrality under international guarantees; we submit that Belgian independence will be better secured by substituting a treaty of permanent alliance between Belgium, France, and ourselves in the place of the present safeguards. It is understood that Belgium herself would welcome such an alliance. ”

“ She has been unable to admit that a people, however weak they may be, should fail in their duty and sacrifice their honour by yielding to force. The Government have waited, not only until the ultimatum had expired, but also until Belgian territory had been violated by German troops, before appealing to France and Great Britain, guarantors of her neutrality, under the same terms as are Germany and Austria-Hungary, to coöperate in the name and in virtue of the treaties in defense of Belgian territory. ”