Part 19 (1/2)

The fact that many distinguished and undoubtedly sincere partisans of Germany have attempted to justify this atrocious rape, suggests a problem of psychology rather than of logic or ethics. It strongly ill.u.s.trates a too familiar phenomenon that great intellectual and moral astigmatism is generally incident to any pa.s.sionate crisis in human history. It shows how pitifully unstable the human intellect is when a great man like Dr. Haeckel, a scholar and historian like Dr.

von Mach, or a doctor of divinity like Dr. Dryander, can be so warped with the pa.s.sions of the hour as to ignore the clearest considerations of political morality.

At the outbreak of the present war Belgium had taken no part whatever in the controversy and was apparently on friendly relations with all the Powers. It had no interest whatever in the Servian question. A thrifty, prosperous people, inhabiting the most densely populated country of Europe, and resting secure in the solemn promises, not merely of Germany, but of the leading European nations that its neutrality should be respected, it calmly pursued the even tenor of its way, and was as unmindful of the disaster, which was so suddenly to befall it, as the people of Pompeii were on the morning of the great eruption when they thronged the theatre in the pursuit of pleasure and disregarded the ominous curling of the smoke from the crater of Vesuvius.

On April 19, 1839, Belgium and Holland signed a treaty which provided that ”Belgium forms an independent state of perpetual neutrality.” To insure that neutrality, Prussia, France, Great Britain, Austria, and Russia on the same date signed a treaty, by which it was provided that these nations jointly ”became the guarantors” of such ”perpetual neutrality.”

In his recent article on the war, George Bernard Shaw, who is inimitable as a farceur but not quite convincing as a jurist, says:

As all treaties are valid only _rebus sic stantibus_, and the state of things which existed at the date of the Treaty of London (1839) had changed so much since then ... that in 1870 Gladstone could not depend on it, and resorted to a special temporary treaty not now in force, the technical validity of the 1839 treaty is extremely doubtful.

Unfortunately for this contention, the Treaty of 1870, to which Mr.

Shaw refers, provided for its own expiration after twelve months and then added:

And on the expiration of that time the independence and neutrality of Belgium will, so far as the high contracting parties are respectively concerned, continue to rest as heretofore on the 1st Article of the Quintuple Treaty of the 19th of April, 1839.

Much has been made by Mr. Shaw and others of an excerpt from a speech of Mr. Gladstone in 1870. In that speech, Mr. Gladstone, as an abstract proposition, declined to accept the broad statement that under all circ.u.mstances the obligations of a treaty might continue, but there is nothing to justify the belief that Mr. Gladstone in any respect questioned either the value or the validity of the Treaty of 1839 with respect to Belgium.

Those who invoke the authority of Gladstone should remember that he also said:

We have an interest in the independence of Belgium which is wider than that which we may have in the literal operation of the guarantee. It is found in the answer to the question whether, under the circ.u.mstances of the case, this country, endowed as it is with influence and power, would quietly stand by and witness the perpetration of the direst crime that ever stained the pages of history, and thus become partic.i.p.ators in the sin.

These words of the great statesman read as a prophecy.

While these treaties were simply declaratory of the rights, which Belgium independently enjoyed as a sovereign nation, yet this solemn guarantee of the great Powers of Europe was so effective that even in 1870, when France and Germany were locked in vital conflict, and the question arose whether Prussia would disregard her treaty obligation, the Iron Chancellor, who ordinarily did not permit moral considerations to warp his political policies, wrote to the Belgian minister in Berlin on July 22, 1870:

In confirmation of my verbal a.s.surance, I have the honor to give in writing a declaration, which, in view of the treaties in force, _is quite superfluous_, that the Confederation of the North and its allies (Germany) will respect the neutrality of Belgium on the understanding of course that it is respected by the other belligerent.

At that time, Belgium had so fine a sense of honor, that although it was not inconsistent with the principles of international law, yet in order to discharge her obligations of neutrality in the spirit as well as the letter, she restricted the clear legal right of her people to supply arms and ammunition to the combatants, thus construing the treaty to her own disadvantage.

It can be added to the credit of both France and Prussia that in their great struggle of 1870-71, each scrupulously respected that neutrality, and France carried out her obligations to such an extreme that although Napoleon and his army could have at one time escaped from Sedan into Belgium, and renewed the attack and possibly--although not probably--saved France, if they had seen fit to violate that neutrality, rather than break the word of France the Emperor Napoleon and his army consented to the crowning humiliation of Sedan.

In the year 1911, in the course of a discussion in Belgium in respect to the fortifications at Flus.h.i.+ng, certain Dutch newspapers a.s.serted that in the event of a Franco-German war, the neutrality of Belgium would be violated by Germany. It was then suggested that if a declaration were made to the contrary in the Reichstag, that such a declaration, ”would be calculated to appease public opinion and to calm its suspicions.”

This situation was communicated to the present German Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, who instructed the German Amba.s.sador at Brussels to a.s.sure the Belgian Foreign Minister,

that he was most appreciative of the sentiment which had inspired our [Belgium's] action. _He declared that Germany had no intention of violating our neutrality_, but he considered that by making a declaration publicly, Germany would weaken her military preparation with respect to France, and being rea.s.sured in the northern quarter would direct her forces to the eastern quarter.[84]

[Footnote 84: Belgian _Gray Book_, enclosure No. 12.]

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.[85]

[Footnote 85: _Idem._]

Herr von Jagow, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, replied: ”The neutrality of Belgium is determined by international conventions, and Germany is resolved to respect these conventions.”

This declaration did not satisfy another member of the Social Democratic Party. Herr von Jagow observed that he had nothing to add to the clear statement which he had uttered with reference to the relations between Germany and Belgium.

In reply to further interrogations from a member of the Social Democratic Party, Herr von Heeringen, Minister of War, stated: ”Belgium does not play any part in the justification of the German scheme of military reorganization; the scheme is justified by the position of matters in the East. Germany will not lose sight of the fact that Belgian neutrality is guaranteed by international treaties.”