However, the German Minister in Brussels continued to offer us explanations which were as perfidious as they were confused and obscure, and to assure us up to the last of the friendly intentions of his Government. The Germany fashioned by Bismarck has assuredly nothing about it to remind us of the Germany of Goethe and Fichte. We might have guessed as much, for that matter, when we saw the Germans glorifying the man who _boasted_ of having falsified the famous Ems telegram in order to make the war of 1870 inevitable, and who succeeded in making his countrymen accept, as a guiding principle, that "might comes before right." _The Speech of the Chancellor in the Reichstag._ However, we may suppose that some slight scruples lingered in the recesses of the German conscience, since on the very day when the Chancellor of the Empire told the British Ambassador in Berlin that an international convention is merely "a scrap of paper,"[6] and that neutrality is only a word, he recognized, in his speech to the Reichstag, that the invasion of Belgium constituted an injustice; but he immediately excused this violation of the law of nations by strategic necessities. B.--Justification of the Entry into Belgium. "Strategic necessities!" said the German Chancellor. These necessities are expounded in the ultimatum, and may be summed up thus: "Germany knows that France is preparing to attack her through Belgium." The first question which occurs to us is: Was France really preparing to cross our territory, and had she massed troops near our frontier? There is assuredly no one outside Germany who would admit this. Indeed, if important bodies of troops had been massed in the north of France they could effectually have opposed the advance of the Germans through Belgium. Now in all the battles which the French fought in our country their numbers were much too small to resist the Germans. Let us also remark that these attempts on the part of the French were made on the 15th August at Dinant, the 19th August at Perwez, and the 23rd August at Semois. How then can any one believe that the French were massed close to our frontier as early as 3rd August? Moreover, the map published in the _N.R.C._ of the 16th December, 1914, confirms the untruthfulness of the German allegations.