carry out, if necessary by force of arms, the measures considered
indispensable.

'We are also informed that Belgian territory has been violated at
Gemmenich.

'In these circumstances, and in view of the fact that Germany
declined to give the same assurance respecting Belgium as France
gave last week in reply to our request made simultaneously at Berlin
and Paris, we must repeat that request, and ask that a satisfactory
reply to it and to my telegram of this morning be received here by
12 o'clock to-night. If not, you are instructed to ask for your
passports, and to say that His Majesty's Government feel bound to
take all steps in their power to uphold the neutrality of Belgium
and the observance of a treaty to which Germany is as much a party
as ourselves.'[125]

The effect at Berlin was remarkable. Every sign was given of
disappointment and resentment at such a step being taken, and the
'harangue' of the Chancellor to Sir Edward Goschen, and his astonishment
at the value laid by Great Britain upon the 'scrap of paper' of 1839
would seem, when coupled with Herr von Jagow's desperate bid for
neutrality at the last moment, to show that the German Government had
counted on the neutrality of this country and had been deeply
disappointed. If these outbursts and attempts at the eleventh hour to
bargain for our neutrality were genuine efforts to keep the peace
between Great Britain and Germany, it is our belief that their origin
must be found in the highest authority in the German Empire, whom we
believe, in spite of petty signs of spitefulness exhibited since the war
broke out, to have been sincerely and honestly working in favour of