]
If, according to jurisprudence, the planning to commit crime is legally
on a par with its achievement, then Germany, for five years prior to the
war, had been guilty of violating Belgium's neutrality--guilty in such a
manner as to leave no doubt in the minds of Belgian, French, and English
statesmen and military experts that the actual commission of the crime
would some day take place.
It was Belgium's peculiar duty, as will be seen, to prepare for that
day. To have taken Germany into her confidence on a point on which
Germany was already fully informed would very likely have hastened the
day and the tragedy thereof.
In keeping up her forts facing Germany and building none on the French
frontier, in exchanging ideas with English military experts as to how
best her neutrality could be defended, Belgium was preparing for the
inevitable. This inevitableness is no longer a matter of moral
conjecture. It is a matter of material evidence.
First, let us see what it was that Germany violated. Belgium, partly by
a decree of the Vienna Congress in 1815 and partly by revolution,
secured her independence from the Netherlands in 1830. The next year she
inaugurated her Constitution, and by the Treaty of London, signed Nov.
15, 1831, became the god-child, as it were, of Austria, France, Great
Britain, Prussia, and Russia, who guaranteed her neutrality for all time
in the following manner:
_Article 7--Belgium, within the limits specified in Articles 1, 2, and
4, shall form an independent and perpetually neutral State.
Pages:
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356