It is necessary to bear all these circumstances in mind in order to appreciate at its full worth the heroic decision of Belgium. Deliberately, with the courage not of hot blood but of conscience and honour, she lost the world in order to gain her own soul. In the treachery of Germany there was lacking not even one episodical baseness. Her representatives lied up to the last moment. Two hours before he presented his ultimatum the German Minister at Brussels issued a message of reassurance through the columns of _Le Soir_; well do I remember how avidly the citizens of Brussels not so much bought as tore out of the hands of the newsboys that issue of the 2nd of August with Herr von Below Saleske’s message, and the sigh of relief that followed the reading of it. He employed an image the sinister fitness of which we did not then suspect. “I have not done so, and personally I do not see any reason why I should have done so, seeing that it was superfluous. The view has always been accepted by us that the neutrality of Belgium will not be violated. If the French Minister had made a formal declaration to that effect it is doubtless because he wished to reinforce obvious fact by some words of reassurance. _The German troops will not march over Belgian territory. We are on the eve of grave events. Perhaps you will see your neighbor’s house on fire, but the flames will spare yours._” The vision of burning towns has come to have a sinister fitness. We know now that already, on the 31st of July, Germany had declined to give any undertaking to respect Belgian neutrality because any reply to the British demand made in that sense “could not but disclose a certain amount of their plan of campaign in the event of war ensuing.” There is no more illuminating phrase in the whole body of correspondence. The violation, it thus plainly appears, was no improvisation under stress of circumstances; on the contrary, it had long since been assumed as a postulate by the German General Staff in the drafting of their war-plan. The declaration of war by a guaranteering Great Power on a guaranteed small nation is a thing so infrequent, it is such a salient in the long line of iniquity, that it must once again be quoted in full. Any guardian in private life who finds himself reluctantly compelled in the interests of a higher morality to murder his ward, any trustee obliged by _Notwehr_ to steal the trust-property, may well enrol it among his forms and precedents. It was delivered at Brussels at seven o’clock on the evening of the 2nd of August. It is worth noting that it was drawn up in German, by way of compliment, no doubt, to the “Teutonic kinship” of Belgium-- “(Very confidential.) “Reliable information has been received by the German Government to the effect that French forces intend to march on the line of the Meuse by Givet and Namur. This information leaves no doubt as to the intention of France to march through Belgian territory against Germany.