And what is all this that flows from the pen of Mr. Shaw about Belgium and “obsolete treaties,” “rights of way,” “necessities that know no international law,” “circumstances that alter treaties”?  Made in Germany such statements are, and yet even the Imperial German Chancellor is not so contemptuous as Bernard Shaw is of Belgium’s charter of existence, the treaty now violated by Germany.

That is a treaty that cannot become obsolete until the powers who made it release Belgium from the restrictions and obligations which the treaty imposes.  Germany pleads guilty in this matter of the violation of Belgian neutrality, though Mr. Shaw attempts to show her innocent, for the German Chancellor has said:  “This is an infraction of international law—­we are compelled to overrule the legitimate protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments.  We shall repair the wrong we are doing as soon as our military aims have been achieved.”  And again the Chancellor said the invasion of Belgium “is contrary to the law of nature.”  To Mr. Bernard Shaw’s peculiar sense of international morality such dealing is not, however, repugnant.

No “Right of Way” in Belgium.

In his letter to President Wilson Mr. Shaw, either willfully or ignorantly, seeks to confuse the neutrality of a neutralized State such as Belgium and the neutrality of an ordinary State such as Italy, and he pretends that violation of the first sort of neutrality creates a situation in no way different from that created by the violation of the second and normal sort of neutrality.  I would refer Mr. Shaw to “The Case for Belgium” issued by the Belgian delegates to the United States wherein they point out that “the peculiarity about Belgian neutrality is that it has been imposed upon her by the powers as the one condition upon which they recognized her national existence.”

The consequence of this is that whereas Italy and the United States and other powers having a similar status can, subject to the risk of attack from an affronted belligerent, please themselves whether or not they condone a violation of their neutrality, Belgium and the other neutralized States cannot condone such violation, but must either resist all breaches of their neutrality or surrender their right to existence.  And further a neutralized State, putting faith in the treaty that guarantees its existence and its neutrality, refrains naturally from that preparation for war which would be deemed necessary in the absence of such a treaty.

There is no such thing as the “right of way” through neutralized Belgium which Mr. Shaw claims on behalf of belligerent Germany.  Far from exercising a right of way Germany has violently committed a trespass, offering a German promise, a mere “scrap of paper,” as reparation.  “A right of way,” argues Bernard Shaw, “is not a right of conquest”; but the truth is that in passing through Belgium Germany assumed dominion over Belgium, which dominion she has since formally asserted and is seeking forcibly to maintain.