Mr. Beck considers this to be so self-evident that he deems it unnecessary to advance any proof.  He quotes the Chancellor’s speech, and, moving for a quick verdict, declares his motion of guilty carried.  The matter, however, is not quite so simple for the man who is seeking for the whole truth.  Let us look at the facts.

Belgium was a neutral country, just as any country has the right to declare itself neutral, with this difference:  that in 1839 she had promised to five powers—­Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia—­that she would remain perpetually neutral.  These five powers in their turn had promised to guarantee her neutrality.  She was, however, a sovereign State, and as such had the undoubted right to cease being neutral whenever she chose by abrogating the Treaty of 1839.  If the other high contracting parties did not agree with her, it was their right to try to coerce Belgium to keep to her pledges, although this would undoubtedly have been an infringement of her sovereignty.

The Treaty of 1839 contains the word “perpetual,” but so does the treaty between France and Germany, in which Alsace and Lorraine are ceded by France to be perpetually an integral part of the German Empire.  Does this mean that France, if the Allies should win, could not retake these provinces?  Nobody probably will believe this.

The Treaty of 1839 was a treaty just like the Treaty of 1871, with this difference, that the latter treaty was concluded between two powers, and the earlier one between five powers on one side and Belgium and Holland on the other.  This gave certain rights to all the signatory powers, any one of whom had the right to feel itself sufficiently aggrieved to go to war if any other power disregarded the treaty.

Rights of Neutrals.

There was once another neutral State, the city and district of Cracow, also established by a treaty to which Great Britain was a signatory.  Three of the signers considered the conditions developing in Cracow to be so threatening that they abolished Cracow as an independent State.  Great Britain sent a polite note of protest, and dropped the matter.

Since that time, however, two Hague Conferences have been held and certain rules agreed upon concerning the rights and duties of neutrals.  The Belgian status of inviolability rests on these rules, called conventions, rather than on the Treaty of 1839.  During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Mr. Gladstone very clearly stated that he did not consider the Treaty of 1839 enforceable.  Great Britain, therefore, made two new treaties, one with France and one with Prussia (quoted and discussed in Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 14, 1914) in which she promised to defend Belgian neutrality, by the side of either France or Prussia, against that one of them who should infringe the neutrality.

These treaties were to terminate one year after peace had been concluded between the contestants.  A treaty, like the one of 1839, however, which was considered unenforceable in 1870, can hardly be claimed to have gained new rights in 1914.  In calm moments nobody will claim that a greater sanctity attaches to it than to the treaty in which Alsace and Lorraine are ceded forever to Germany.