intentions of France and Russia; each State had its ultra-patriots who
had done their best to give away their country's case; and if Russia
was suspect of Panslavist ambition, France was accused of building up
a colonial empire in North Africa in order to throw millions of
coloured troops into the scale for the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine.
But no such charge could be brought against Belgium. She had no
interest and no intention but to live in peace with her neighbours,
and that peace had been guaranteed her by international contract. If
such a title to peace was insecure there could be no security for the
world and nothing but subservience for little nations. The public
sense which for a century had been accustomed to welcome national
independence wherever it raised its head--in Greece, the Balkans,
Italy, Hungary, Poland, the South American Republics--revolted at its
denial to Belgium in the interest of German military aggression; and
censure of the breach of international contract was converted to
passion by the wrong wantonly done to a weak and peaceful by a mighty
and ambitious Power. Great Britain was not literally bound to
intervene; but if ever there was a moral obligation on a country, it
lay upon her now, and the instant meeting of that obligation implied
an instinctive recognition of the character of the war that was to be
fought. Mixed and confused though the national issues might be in
various quarters, the war, so far as concerned the two Powers who were
to be mainly instrumental in its winning, was a civil war of mankind
to determine the principle upon which international relations should
repose.

That issue was not for every one to see, and there were many to whom
the struggle was merely national rivalry in which the interests of
England happened to coincide with those of France and in which we
should have intervened just the same without any question of Belgium's