“In this category we may place the surrender of territory.  No impartial thinker can deny that the cession of Antwerp to England would have been a breach of neutrality on the part of Belgium, even if it had occurred in peace time.  The same is true for the granting of occupation rights, and landing places for troops, or for the establishment of a harbour which might serve as a basis for the military or naval operations of another State.

“Moreover, it is unnecessary to exert one’s imagination in order to discover ‘peaceful negotiations’ which are incompatible with permanent neutrality, for history offers us two exceedingly instructive examples.  When a tariff union between France and Belgium was proposed in 1840, England objected because the plan was not in accord with Belgian neutrality.  Again in 1868, when the Eastern Railway Company of France sought to obtain railway concessions in Belgium, it was the latter country which refused its consent, and in the subsequent parliamentary debate the step was designated an act of neutrality.”

From this extract it is evident that Professor Frank has undermined his own case.  Belgian neutrality was intended by the great powers to be the corner-stone of the European balance of power.  During the last forty years Germany’s carefully meditated increase of armaments on land and sea threatened to dislodge the corner-stone.  When the Conference of London declared Belgium to be a permanently neutral country, there was apparent equality of power on each side of the stone.  In 1870 the Franco-German war showed that the balance of power was already disturbed at this corner of the European edifice.  Still Germany’s pledged word was considered sufficient guarantee of the status quo.

Since 1870 the potential energy on the German side of the corner-stone has increased in an unprecedented degree, and this huge energy has been consistently converted into concrete military and naval forces.  This alteration in the potential status quo ante has been partly the result of natural growth, but in a still greater degree, to Germany’s doctrine that it is only might which counts.

Another German professor[138] had defined the position in a sentence:  “Germany is a boiler charged to danger-point with potential energy.  In such a case is it a sound policy to try to avert the possibility of an explosion by screwing down all its safety-valves?” Recognizing that Belgian neutrality has existed for many years past solely on Germany’s good-will, it became the right and urgent duty of the other signatory powers to endeavour to strengthen the corner-stone.  Germany absolutely refused to relax in any way the pressure which her “potential energy” was exercising at this point, therefore it was necessary above all for France and Great Britain to bolster up the threatened corner.