By the treaty of April 19th, 1839, Prussia, France, England, Austria, and Russia declared themselves guarantors of the treaty concluded on the same day between the King of the Belgians and the King of the Netherlands.  This treaty provides: 

     Belgium forms an independent State of perpetual neutrality.

That is to say, Belgium was forbidden, in case of war, to take the part of any of the belligerents.

Since then Belgium has fulfilled all her neutrality obligations; she has acted in a spirit of absolute impartiality.  She has left nothing undone to maintain and make respected her neutrality.  Germany’s obligation to respect Belgian neutrality was even more emphatically affirmed by one of Germany’s greatest men, by the creator of the empire.  Prince, then Count, Bismarck, wrote to Baron Nothomb, Belgian Minister in Berlin, on the 22nd of July, 1870, as follows: 

In confirmation of my verbal assurances, I have the honor to give in writing a declaration which, in view of the treaties in force, is quite superfluous, that the Confederation of the North and its allies will respect the neutrality of Belgium on the understanding, of course, that it is respected by the other belligerents.

On July 31 of the present year the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Secretary General of the Foreign Office had a long conversation with the German Minister in Brussels.  It was pointed out to him that in the course of the controversy raised in 1911 by the introduction of the Dutch project for the fortification of the Scheldt, that his predecessor, Herr von Flotow, had assured the Belgian Government that in the event of a Franco-German war Germany would not violate Belgian neutrality; that Mr. Bethmann-Hollweg, the Imperial Chancellor, had given similar assurance; that in 1913 Herr von Jagow, the German Foreign Secretary, had made similar statements of a reassuring character in the budget committee of the Reichstag concerning the neutrality of Belgium; to which the German Minister replied that he was aware of the conversation with his predecessor, and that “he was certain that the sentiments expressed at that epoch had not changed.”

On August 2nd, in the course of the day, the German Minister in Brussels, M. De Below Saleske, gave an interview to the newspaper Le Soir, and declared that Belgium had nothing to fear from Germany.  He went so far as to employ this expression: 

     You will see, perhaps, your neighbor’s house on fire, but your
     house will remain intact.

The same day, at 7 o’clock in the evening, he communicated the following note to the Belgian Government: 

The German Note.