By Walter Littlefield.
Germany's explanation of her violation of Belgium's neutrality has thus
far assumed two successive phases which have been placed on record by
the Imperial Chancellor in as many speeches in the Reichstag. Before
that body Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg said on Aug. 4, 1914:
Our troops have occupied Luxemburg, and perhaps have also
found it necessary to enter Belgium territory. This is
contrary to international law. The French Government has
declared in Brussels that they will respect the neutrality of
Belgium as long as she respects the opponent. We know,
however, that France was ready to invade Belgium. France could
wait; we, however, could not, because a French invasion in our
lower Rhein flanks would have proved fatal. So we were forced
to disregard the protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian
Governments. We shall try to make good the injustice we have
committed as soon as our military goal has been reached. Who,
like we, are fighting for the highest, must only consider how
victory can be gained.
On Dec. 2 last Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg said:
When, on Aug. 4, I spoke of the wrong which we were committing
with our march into Belgium, it was not yet established
whether the Belgian Government at the last moment would not
desire to spare the country and retire under protest to
Antwerp.... Now, however, that it is demonstrated by documents
found in Brussels how the Belgians surrendered their
neutrality to England the entire world knows two facts. One is
that when our troops on the night of Aug. 3-4 entered Belgian
territory they were on the ground of a State which had given
up its neutrality long ago....
To both these charges the Belgium Government has made reply. To the
first it said that, while the assurance that France would not invade
Belgium was sufficient, yet if France did take the initiative the
Belgian Army stood ready to defend its territory from a French invasion.
To the second, it said that the documents found in Brussels merely
showed an exchange of ideas as to how England might aid Belgium in
defending her neutrality against an attack by Germany, and that there
was nothing binding on either England or Belgium as to the outcome of
these "conversations" of military experts.
In rebuttal Germany has asked: But why were we also not taken into the
confidence of Brussels and similar plans formulated by which we might
aid Belgium in repelling an invasion from either France or England?
To this the answer is simple: It has always been one of the objects of
British policy to preserve Belgian neutrality, and that, aside from
moral considerations, it would not be good military science for France
to seek Germany via Belgium.
But this answer is capable of an expansion it has not hitherto received.
Why did Belgium appear to fear an invasion from Germany and not one from
England or France?
One has heard a great deal about Germany's supposed ambition to expand
her North Sea coast at the expense of Denmark, Holland and Belgium, by
coercing the Danish and the Dutch Governments to rebuild their coast
fortifications toward England and to dismantle their forts on the German
frontier. Much has also been said of Germany's contemplated invasion of
the Low Countries at the time of the Agadir incident in 1911.
Documentary proof of Germany's contemplated initiative has hitherto been
missing. Certain facts have, however, recently come to hand which
enable one to review the German explanation. One of these facts embraces
a project for railway expansion engineered and carried out on the
Belgian frontier, which can leave no doubt in any reasonable mind that
Germany deliberately planned to violate Belgium's neutrality the moment
it became a military expediency to invade France.[8]
[Footnote 8: Compare the railway maps of Northern France and Northern
Germany in "Cook's Continental Time Tables" for the years 1908 and 1914.
A confidential agent of the British Government examined the ground in
May, 1914. Part of the results of his work has been published from time
to time by the military correspondents of The Times and The Morning Post
of London and all is particularly designated in the British Foreign
Office Memorandum secured by Prof. Hibben of Princeton on Nov. 9, 1914,
and published in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Nov. 25. In this memorandum it is
stated:
"The strategic dispositions of Germany, especially as regards railways,
have for some years given rise to the apprehension that Germany would
attack France through Belgium."
The disposition of the Third, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh
Germany Army Corps and the First, Fourth, and Fifth Cavalry Divisions,
from Aug. 2 to 5, shown on French war maps, reveals that the attack was
so made.]
If, according to jurisprudence, the planning to commit crime is legally
on a par with its achievement, then Germany, for five years prior to the
war, had been guilty of violating Belgium's neutrality--guilty in such a
manner as to leave no doubt in the minds of Belgian, French, and English
statesmen and military experts that the actual commission of the crime
would some day take place.
It was Belgium's peculiar duty, as will be seen, to prepare for that
day. To have taken Germany into her confidence on a point on which
Germany was already fully informed would very likely have hastened the
day and the tragedy thereof.
In keeping up her forts facing Germany and building none on the French
frontier, in exchanging ideas with English military experts as to how
best her neutrality could be defended, Belgium was preparing for the
inevitable. This inevitableness is no longer a matter of moral
conjecture. It is a matter of material evidence.
First, let us see what it was that Germany violated. Belgium, partly by
a decree of the Vienna Congress in 1815 and partly by revolution,
secured her independence from the Netherlands in 1830. The next year she
inaugurated her Constitution, and by the Treaty of London, signed Nov.
15, 1831, became the god-child, as it were, of Austria, France, Great
Britain, Prussia, and Russia, who guaranteed her neutrality for all time
in the following manner:
_Article 7--Belgium, within the limits specified in Articles 1, 2, and
4, shall form an independent and perpetually neutral State. She shall be
bound to observe this same neutrality toward all other States._
_Article 26--Consequent upon the stipulation of the present treaty there
shall be peace and unity between H.M. the King of the Belgians, on one
part, and H.M. the Emperor of Austria, the King of the French, the King
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the King of Prussia,
and the Emperor of all the Russians, on the other, respectively,
forever._
The treaty, however, was not at once put into force, for there was a
pending quarrel between Belgium and the Netherlands. When peace was made
in 1839 the treaty was again brought forward, signed, and promulgated.
Thereupon all the States of Europe recognized the Kingdom of Belgium.
The plenipotentiaries who then signed the treaty were Palmerston for
Great Britain, Sylvan van de Weyer for Belgium, Senfft for Austria, H.
Sebastiani for France, Bülow for Prussia, and Pozzo di Borgo for Russia.
It has been asserted that, for various reasons, it was not incumbent
upon the German Empire to observe the treaties contracted for by the
Kingdom of Prussia. But these assertions, even to German statesmen,
amount to nothing. That the German Government recognized that "the
neutrality of Belgium is determined by international conventions" has
been repeatedly asserted by its numbers, from the inauguration of the
Imperial Constitution, April 16, 1871, down to Aug. 4, 1914, when the
Imperial Chancellor admitted that the presence of German troops in
Belgium was "contrary to international law."
This he stated in the Reichstag. "I speak openly," he had said. That
same evening he is reported to have exclaimed to the British Ambassador
that "just for a word--'neutrality,' a word which in war time had so
often been disregarded--just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was
going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to
be friends with her."
There can be no doubt that Germany realized just what she was doing when
she marched her troops into Belgium. The question is, had she any
preconceived idea of such a march?
In the southwest corner of Prussia is a rectangular piece of territory,
the western and eastern sides of which are formed respectively by the
Belgian and Luxemburg frontiers and the River Rhine. This territory
includes about 3,600 square miles, and supports a population including
the great centres of Cologne, Coblence, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Treves, of
nearly 1,000,000 souls. In other words, it is an area about half as
large as New Jersey, if we omit that State's water surface, and just
about as thickly populated.
[Illustration: Map Showing Germany's Plan to Invade Belgium by a
Strategic System of Railways Begun in 1909.]
Five years ago this little corner of Prussia had about 15.10 miles of
railway to every 100 square miles of territory and New Jersey 30.23. In
five years the Prussian territory has increased her railway mileage to
28.30 and New Jersey to a little less than 30.25.
Five years ago, in the Prussian territory, the only double lines
existing were those from Cologne to Treves, from Coblence to Treves, and
the two double lines, one on each side of the Rhine, from Cologne to
Coblence, thus forming the three sides of a triangle. There was also the
double track running from Cologne to Aix-la-Chapelle. These double lines
were fed as commerce required, by only two sets of single-track lines,
all amounting to a little less than 550 miles of traction--a very fair
service, considering the products of the country covered.
In five years, without any apparent industrial and commercial demand for
it, this traction has been increased to nearly twice its length, or to
about 1,020 miles. Villages like Dumpelfeld, Ahrdorf, Hillesheim,
Pronsfeld, and the health resort of Gerolstein of comic opera fame, all
of less than 1,300 inhabitants, have been linked up by double-track
lines with towns like Remagen, St. Vith, and Andernach, whose
populations only range from 1,500 to 9,000.
Exactly what has been done? In the first place the Stolberg-St. Vith
line has been relaid and doubled, and very extensive detraining stations
constructed at various points along it, especially at Weiwertz and St.
Vith. Then the Remagen-Adenau line has been doubled as far as
Dumpelfeld, whence a double line has been continued to Hillesheim, with
double branches outward from Hillesheim to Pelm and Junkerath, both on
the Cologne-Treves railway.
Then from Ahrdorf, between Dumpelfeld and Hillesheim, a single line has
been built to connect with the Cologne-Treves line at Blankenheim, and a
most important double track laid across the barren country from
Junkerath to Weiwertz on the Stolberg-St. Vith line.
It will thus be seen that five lines converge on Pelm: the double line
from Cologne, the new double line from Remagen via Hillesheim, and the
single line from Andernach. Pelm is 2-3/4 miles from Gerolstein, and yet
over this short distance between the two villages there are laid down
six parallel lines of rail, besides numerous additional sidings.
Moreover, the double line from Hillesheim to Junkerath crosses over the
main Cologne-Treves line by a bridge, and runs parallel to it for some
distance before turning off to the left to reach Weiwertz.
In fact the knot of lines around Junkerath, Pelm and Gerolstein is a
marvel of construction for heavy, rapid transit, for no congestion would
arise in a case of a sudden flood of traffic going in various
directions, and to secure still more freedom the line from Gerolstein to
Pronsfeld has been doubled.
Few of these lines, it is to be noted, cross the frontier. Three of them
as late as last May led to blind terminals within less than a day's
march from it--the double line from Cologne via Stolberg to Weiwertz,
the double line from Cologne via Junkerath and Weiwertz to St. Vith, and
the double line from Remagen via Hillesheim and Pelm to Pronsfeld.
The cost of the whole system, with its numerous bridges and multiple
sidings, must have been enormous. The German average of $108,500 to the
mile would hardly cover it.
Here is what a traveler saw when he visited this corner of Prussia last
May:
The ---- is as much struck by the significance of the ordinary
traffic along these lines as he is by the huge embankments and
cuttings on which nothing has yet had time to grow, and by the
inordinate extent and number of the sidings to be seen
everywhere. Baby trains, consisting of a locomotive and four
short cars, dodder along two or three times a day, and if a
freight train happens to be encountered, it will be found to
be loaded with railway plant.
Another point that is noticeable is that provision exists
everywhere at these new junctions and extensions for avoiding
an up-line crossing a down-line on the level; the up-line is
carried over the down-line by a bridge, involving long
embankments on both sides and great expense, but enormously
simplifying traffic problems when it comes to a question of
full troop trains pushing through at the rate of one every
quarter of an hour, and the empty cars returning eastward at
the same rate.
The detraining stations are of sufficient length to
accommodate the longest troop train (ten cars) easily, and
they generally have at least four sidings apart from the
through up-and-down lines. Moreover, at almost every station
there are two lines of siding long enough for troop trains, so
that they can be used to some extent as detraining stations,
and so that a couple of troop trains can be held up at any
time while traffic continues uninterrupted.
It is impossible to believe that this system was constructed for any
other purpose than to prepare for the exigency which might some day
force Germany to ignore the Treaty of 1839 and invade Belgium. At least
it presumably accounts for the vast armies which invested Liége and
Namur in the early days of last August.
Its existence, in both the light and the darkness of the Treaty of
Neutrality, shows that Belgium was justified in taking any measures
which were likely to preserve her national existence, so obviously
threatened. That these measures were always within the letter and spirit
of the treaty of 1839 is so much to her credit.
The strategic lines that Germany built on her frontier would have
justified her in going further. Her obligations to herself and to her
pledged protectors prevented this. Germany went on with her railway
building unchallenged. She laboriously constructed an edifice which is
both a monument and an altar--a monument to military forethought and
expediency, an altar on which she has sacrificed her national honor.