Looking at the matter from a purely moral point of view, we must recognize that the majority of the British have a deeply religious spirit, but a Christian ideal that is utterly at variance with the warlike pietism of the Kaiser and his subjects. Their unsophisticated ideas and their Puritan principles lead them to condemn all statecraft that lets loose the scourge of war. Their reluctance to take part in a Continental war was only overcome through the dastardly attack of Germany upon a little free people, too weak to parry the blow. Then followed an irresistible impulse to punish and avenge, when news was brought of the atrocities committed by the German soldiery in Belgium. It is this nation, dowered with a true moral greatness, that enemy speakers and pamphleteers accuse to-day of having formed the coalition that bars the way to their ambitious schemes. It is England that they denounce as having woven a web of intrigue to enmesh their country. They know the British nation no better than Treitschke and his followers knew it, when they proclaimed that it was a mere rabble of shop-keepers, greedy of pelf and destitute of warrior virtues. They misjudged it as hopelessly as Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, who was indignant at its setting so much store by an antiquated treaty. The events leading up to the present war have revealed to us the honesty and scrupulousness of British diplomacy, side by side with the bad faith of German diplomacy; and they have thrown ample light upon the loyalty of Great Britain and her ministers, as contrasted with the double-dealing of Germany and her Imperial functionaries. CHAPTER IX. BELGIAN NEUTRALITY AND THE INVASION OF BELGIUM. I. The violation of Belgian neutrality has brought forth a luxuriant crop of books, pamphlets, and articles in newspapers and reviews. Some indignantly denounce, others impudently defend the action of the German Government. The commentaries published on the treaties of 19th April 1839 have taught many Belgians who were ill-informed on the point what the permanent neutrality of their country really means. It was not a Heaven-sent blessing graciously poured out on the new State that had built itself up after the rising of the Flemish and Walloon provinces against the House of Orange. In recognizing it as an independent kingdom and granting it the privilege of permanent neutrality, the five Powers who at that time laid down the law to Europe invested it with a special character, as if it had been a creation of their diplomacy. The neutrality of Belgium was indeed to shield her from the grasping designs of her neighbours, but it was also destined to serve the interests of the great Powers by helping to maintain the balance of Europe. Thus the treaties of 1839 repaired the injury that had been done to the work of the Congress of Vienna, when that artificial fabric, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, was destroyed through Belgian efforts.