Note 4 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

Speech in the Reichstag, August 4th, 1914. But, so far as I know, no one in this country has noticed that the absolute inviolability of Belgium, under all circumstances and without exception, has been laid down in the leading German text-book on International Law, which declares that such treaties are the great “landmarks of progress” in the formation of a European polity, and that the guarantors must step in, whether invited or uninvited, to vindicate them. “Nothing,” it is added, “could make the situation of Europe more insecure than an egotistical repudiation by the great States of these duties of international fellowship.”—Holtzendorff Handbuch des Völkerrechts III. (Part 16), pp. 93, 108, 109.