Chapter IX
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THE CASE OF BELGIUM
The callous disregard by Germany of the rights of Belgium is one of the most shocking exhibitions of political iniquity in the history of the world.
That it has had its parallel in other and less civilized ages may be freely admitted, but until German scientists, philosophers, educators, and even doctors of divinity attempted to justify this wanton outrage, it had been hoped that mankind had made some progress since the times of Wallenstein and Tilly.
The verdict of Civilization in this respect will be little affected by the ultimate result of the war, for even if Germany should emerge from this titanic conflict as victor, and become, as it would then undoubtedly become, the first power in the world, it would none the less be a figure for the “time of scorn to point his slow unmoving finger at.” To the eulogists of Alexander the Great, Seneca was wont to say, “Yes, but he murdered Callisthenes,” and to the eulogists of victorious Germany, if indeed it shall prove victorious, the wise and just of all future ages will say, “Yes, but it devastated Belgium.”
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 illustrates a too familiar phenomenon that great intellectual and moral astigmatism is generally incident to any passionate 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 passions 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 circumstances 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 circumstances 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 participators 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 assurance, 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 Flushing, certain Dutch newspapers asserted 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 Ambassador at Brussels to assure 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 reassured in the northern quarter would direct her forces to the eastern quarter.[84]
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]
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.”
A member of the same party, having again referred to Belgium, Herr von Jagow again pointed out that his declaration regarding Belgium was sufficiently clear.[86]
On July 31, 1914, the Belgian Foreign Minister, in a conversation with Herr von Below, the German Minister at Brussels, asked him whether he knew of the assurance which, as above stated, had been given by von Bethmann-Hollweg through the German Ambassador at Brussels to the Government at Belgium in 1911, and Herr von Below replied that he did, and added, “that he was certain that the sentiments to which expression was given at that time had not changed.”
Thus on July 31, 1914, Germany, through its accredited representative at Brussels, repeated the assurances contained in the treaty of 1839, as reaffirmed in 1870, and again reaffirmed in 1911 and 1913.
Germany’s moral obligation had an additional express confirmation.
The second International Peace Conference was held at The Hague in 1907. There were present the representatives of forty-four nations, thus making as near an approach to the poet’s dream of the “federation of the world” and the “parliament of man” as has yet been possible in the slow progress of mankind.
That convention agreed upon a certain declaration of principles, and among the signatures appended to the document was the representative of His Majesty, the German Emperor.
They agreed upon certain principles of international morality, most of them simply declaratory of the uncodified international law then existing, and these were subsequently ratified by formal treaties of the respective governments, including Germany, which were deposited in the archives of The Hague. While this treaty as an express covenant was not binding, unless all belligerents signed it, yet, it recognized an existing moral obligation. The Hague Peace Conference proceeded to define the rights of neutral powers, and in so doing simply reaffirmed the existing international law.
The pertinent parts of this great compact, with reference to the sanctity of neutral territory, are as follows: