Belgium -- History -- German occupation, 1914-1918
Belgium therefore had serious reasons for expecting a German attack.
There was evidently only one thing for her to do: to demand assistance
of the country which had constituted itself the protector of her
neutrality, and on which she had always been accustomed to rely with
unshakable confidence.
1. THE REPORT OF M. LE BARON GREINDL, SOMETIME BELGIAN MINISTER IN
BERLIN.
_Falsification of the Greindl Report._
On the 14th October, 1914, the German Government posted on the walls of
Brussels a placard entitled: _England and Belgium_ (_Documents found at
the headquarters of the Belgian Staff_). A reproduction of this placard
was distributed gratuitously, thousands of copies being issued the same
day. This document contains, first, a rapid summary of a report on the
relations which existed in 1906 between the Belgian Chief of Staff
and the British military attaché. Then the placard reproduces, "word
for word," a portion of a report made by M. Greindl, dated the 23rd
December, 1911. In this report M. Greindl warns the Belgian Government
of the possibility of a French attack.
Whosoever will attentively read the exhibited portion of this report
will at once remark that its phrases lack connection and logical
sequence. Thus, there is certainly a hiatus between the opening phrases
and those that begin with: "When it became evident that we should not
allow ourselves to be alarmed by the pretended danger of closing the
Scheldt, the plan was not abandoned, but modified, in the sense that
the English army of assistance would not be disembarked on the Belgian
coast, but in the nearer French ports." Now what is meant by this
"pretended danger"? Pretended by whom? And then "we should not allow
ourselves to be alarmed." Who is "we?" Remark that a few lines farther
on the report speaks of the eventuality of a battle between the Belgian
army and the British army; Belgium, which was just now the ally of the
British, is now their adversary, although nothing indicates how she
passed from the first attitude to the second. In the same sentence
the closing of the Scheldt is spoken of with an English landing on
the _Belgian coast_; yet we cannot imagine M. Greindl placing Antwerp
on the Belgian coast. Can we doubt after this that phrases have been
suppressed in this portion of the document? Evidently not; for it is
radically impossible to realize the bearing and the meaning of the
report by reading the portion published. What, then, is the conclusion
forced upon us? It is that the German Government has "cooked" the
text; omitting to copy certain passages which would not tally with the
deductions which it wished to draw from it, and that it has perhaps
even twisted the meaning of certain phrases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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