year before that the German attack would proceed by way of Liège and
Namur. There had also been military "conversations" between Belgian
and British officers with regard to possible British assistance in the
event of Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality. But the Belgian
Ministry was naturally reluctant to proceed far on that assumption,
which might have been treated as an insult by an honest or dishonest
German Government; and it was impossible for England to press its
assistance upon a neutralized State which could not even discuss it
without casting a slur upon the honour of its most powerful neighbour.
Nor was England bound by treaty to defend the neutrality of Belgium.
She had been so bound by a treaty concluded during the Franco-Prussian
War; but that treaty expired in the following year, and the treaty of
1839, which regulated the international situation of Belgium, merely
bound the five great signatory Powers not to violate Belgian
neutrality without obliging them individually or collectively to
resist its violation. It was not in fact regarded in 1839 as
conceivable that any of the Great Powers would ever violate so solemn
a pledge, and there was some complacent satisfaction that by thus
neutralizing a land which had for centuries been the cockpit of
Europe, the Powers had laid the foundations of permanent peace. But
the bond of international morality was loosened during the next
half-century, and in the eighties even English newspapers argued in
favour of a German right-of-way through Belgium for the purposes of
war with France. It does not appear that the treaty was ever regarded
as a serious obstacle by the German military staff; for neither
treaties nor morality belong to the curricula of military science
which had concluded that encirclement was the only way to defeat a
modern army, and that through Belgium alone could the French defence
be encircled. The Chancellor admitted that technically Germany was
wrong, and promised full reparation after the war. But he was never