After the civilized world had condemned the invasion of Belgium with an unprecedented approach to unanimity, the German Chancellor rather tardily discovered that public opinion was still a vital force in the world and that the strategic results of the occupation of Belgium had not compensated for the moral injury. For this reason he framed five months after this crime against civilization a belated defense, which proved so unconvincing that the Bernhardi plea of military necessity is clearly preferable, as at least having the merit of candor. After proclaiming to the world that the German Foreign Office had discovered in Brussels certain secret documents, which disclosed the fact that the neutrality of Belgium at the time of the invasion was a sham and after the civilized world had refused to accept this bald and unsupported assertion, as it had also refused to accept the spurious evidence of a well-known Arctic explorer, the German Foreign Office in December, 1914 published its alleged proofs. The first purported to be a report of the Chief of the Belgian General Staff to the Minister of War and reported his conversations in 1906 with a military attaché of the British Legation in Brussels. The second purported to be a report of similar conversations in 1912 between the same officials. In an authorized statement, published on January 27, 1915, Sir Edward Grey states that there is no record of either of these negotiations in the English Foreign Office or the War Office; but this fact is not in itself conclusive and as there is no evidence that the documents were forged, their genuineness should be assumed in the absence of some more specific denial. The documents, however, do not appreciably advance the cause of Germany, for they disclose on their face that the conversations were not binding on the Governments of England or Belgium but were simply an informal exchange of view between the officials, and what is far more to the purpose, the whole of the first conversation of April 10, 1906, was expressly based upon the statement that "_the entry of the English into Belgium would take place only after the violation of our neutrality by Germany_." The second document also shows that the Belgian Chief of Staff expressly stated that any invasion of Belgium by England, made to repel a prior German invasion, could not take place without the express consent of Belgium, to be given when the occasion arose, and it is further evident that the statement of the English military attaché--clearly a subordinate official to define the foreign policy of a great Empire--expressly predicated his assumption, that England might disembark troops in Belgium, upon the statement that its object would be to repel a German invasion of Belgian territory.