Note 1054 — Chapter XVI

In a dispatch to Grierson on Jan. 19 Barnardiston wrote that he had told Ducarne at their first meeting that Sir C. Phipps, the British minister in Brussels, had already mentioned the matter to the Belgian Foreign Minister (ibid., III, 188). In some notes by Barnardiston deposited in the war office, he stated that Phipps would speak to the Belgian Foreign Minister. The Belgian government asserts that there is no record of such a communication; rather, that the Foreign Minister learned of the military conversations from the Belgian Minister of War. There is no report of any conversation on this subject between Phipps and the Belgian Minister in the papers in the British foreign office, nor is there any record of instructions on it being sent to Phipps. On March 17 Barnardiston wrote to Grierson that both the Belgian Minister of War and the Minister of Foreign Affairs knew of the conversation (editor’s note, ibid., p. 203; Collected Diplomatic Documents Relating to the Outbreak of the European War, p. 355; Haldane, Before the War, pp. 201 f.). There is no doubt but that the conversations were approved by both foreign ministers.