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Updated: June 10, 2025
This stupendous fairy-tale Holland was expected to believe and to accept as the end of the affair. She did not believe it. She had to accept it. What else could she do? Fight? She did not want to share Belgium's dreadful fate. The Dutch Government proposed that the whole Tubantia incident be submitted to an international commission.
I protested strongly against that statement, and said that, in the same way as he and Herr von Jagow wished me to understand that for strategical reasons it was a matter of life and death to Germany to advance through Belgium and violate the latter's neutrality, so I would wish him to understand that it was, so to speak, a matter of "life and death" for the honour of Great Britain that she should keep her solemn engagement to do her utmost to defend Belgium's neutrality if attacked.
"The rest of the fellows all joined in the chorus: It's a mine here and a mine there, Over the ocean everywhere; Now our ships can cross the sea And win the war for Liberty; Uncle Sammy brought his ships To France' and Belgium's shores. That force of mine has done its share; We've fixed the U-boat fair and square; When victory comes they'll all declare That mines have won the war.
It would have been a most useful move from the point of view of propaganda, and, while posing as Belgium's kind protectors, they might always have reaped the benefit through fresh taxes and new contributions. If they have killed the goose rather than gather its golden eggs it is because they could not afford to wait.
The effects are all there, ready-made, waiting to be set down. Nor do I know how a child's doll came to be in that harried, uptorn place. I only know it was there, and being there it seemed to me to sum up the fate of little Belgium in this great war. If I had been seeking a visible symbol of Belgium's case I do not believe I could have found a more fitting one anywhere.
France and England have a supreme duty to fulfil: they are called to avenge Belgium's wrongs, and thereby establish the principle that even necessity must recognize law. The question of Belgian atrocities is so important that no apology is required for giving the British public every possible opportunity to sift evidence, and above all, to hear the German side.
It came to me from the Imperial German Legation at The Hague. It was a note for transmission to the Belgian Government, beginning with a reference to the fall of Liege and the hopeless folly of attempting to resist the German invasion, and continuing with an intimation of the terrible consequences which would follow Belgium's persistence in her mad idea of keeping her word of honor.
I have only coasted along the edges of Belgium's tragedy, and the rest of the story, of which we were a part for the next two days the flight of those hundreds of thousands of homeless people is something that can scarcely be told you must follow it out in imagination into its countless uprooted, disorganized lives.
*Belgium's Alleged Neutrality.* But then the violation of Belgian neutrality! How with the aid of this bugaboo the entire neutral world has been stirred up against us, after England made it the hypocritical excuse for her declaration of war!
"There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gather'd then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes a rising knell!
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