[Footnote 138:  Hermann Oncken (Heidelberg), in the Quarterly Review, October, 1913.  The author of the article charges Great Britain with screwing down the valves, which is a deliberate distortion of the truth.  Britain has always opened her markets free to German goods and admitted the same privileges to her rival—­so far as these did not run contrary to established rights—­in all parts of the world.  With regard to territorial expansion a treaty had been drawn up between the two Powers and was ready to be signed just when war broke out.  That treaty would have afforded Germany immense opportunities for expansion, but not at the expense of Europe.  Germany, however, desired European expansion, and according to her accepted teaching, the fate of extra-European territories will be decided on the battlefields of Europe.]

The former Power could have achieved this purpose by building a chain of huge fortresses along her Belgian frontier.  Why this precautionary measure was never taken is difficult to surmise, but had it been taken, Germany would have ascribed to her neighbour plans of aggression—­and declared war.

Great Britain could have restored the balance by creating an army of several millions.  Lord Haldane has announced that the late Liberal Government was “afraid” to do this, although the fear of losing office may have been greater than their fear for Germany.

The measures which England did take were merely non-binding conversations with the military authorities of France and Belgium; the making of plans for putting a British garrison of defence on Belgian territory in the event of the latter’s neutrality being violated or threatened; and the printing of books describing the means of communication in Belgium.[139]

[Footnote 139:  “Belgium, Road and River Reports,” prepared by the General Staff, Vol.  I., 1912; II., 1913; III. & IV., 1914.  Copies of this work have been seized by the Germans in Belgium, and capital is being made of the incident to prove a violation of Belgian neutrality.  If the British General Staff had nothing better to do than to compile guide-books to Belgium for a non-existent British army, it appears merely amusing.  But if the late Liberal Government believed that Germany’s potential energy could be prevented from breaking through into Belgian territory by a barricade of guide-books—­it was a lamentable error of judgment.  On the whole we are forced to call it a tragical irony, that the only defences which Belgium possessed against the furor teutonicus—­excepting the Belgian army—­were a “scrap of paper” and a barricade of the same material.]

As a result of these measures, Belgium stands charged by Germany with having broken her own neutrality, and German writers are naively asking why Belgium did not give the same confidence to Germany which she gave to England.  The German mind knows quite well, that in building strategic railways to the Belgian frontier she betrayed the line of direction which the potential energy was intended to take, when the burst came.  Unofficially Germany has long since proclaimed her intention to invade Belgium; it was an “open secret.”