Note 139 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
[Footnote 139: "Belgium, Road and River Reports," prepared by the General Staff, Vol. I., 1912; II., 1913; III. & IV., 1914. Copies of this work have been seized by the Germans in Belgium, and capital is being made of the incident to prove a violation of Belgian neutrality. If the British General Staff had nothing better to do than to compile guide-books to Belgium for a non-existent British army, it appears merely amusing. But if the late Liberal Government believed that Germany's potential energy could be prevented from breaking through into Belgian territory by a barricade of guide-books—it was a lamentable error of judgment. On the whole we are forced to call it a tragical irony, that the only defences which Belgium possessed against the furor teutonicus—excepting the Belgian army—were a "scrap of paper" and a barricade of the same material.]