Great Britain could have restored the balance by creating an army of several millions. Lord Haldane has announced that the late Liberal Government was "afraid" to do this, although the fear of losing office may have been greater than their fear for Germany. The measures which England did take were merely non-binding conversations with the military authorities of France and Belgium; the making of plans for putting a British garrison of defence on Belgian territory in the event of the latter's neutrality being violated or threatened; and the printing of books describing the means of communication in Belgium.[139] [Footnote 139: "Belgium, Road and River Reports," prepared by the General Staff, Vol. I., 1912; II., 1913; III. & IV., 1914. Copies of this work have been seized by the Germans in Belgium, and capital is being made of the incident to prove a violation of Belgian neutrality. If the British General Staff had nothing better to do than to compile guide-books to Belgium for a non-existent British army, it appears merely amusing. But if the late Liberal Government believed that Germany's potential energy could be prevented from breaking through into Belgian territory by a barricade of guide-books--it was a lamentable error of judgment. On the whole we are forced to call it a tragical irony, that the only defences which Belgium possessed against the _furor teutonicus_--excepting the Belgian army--were a "scrap of paper" and a barricade of the same material.] As a result of these measures, Belgium stands charged by Germany with having broken her own neutrality, and German writers are naively asking why Belgium did not give the same confidence to Germany which she gave to England. The German mind knows quite well, that in building strategic railways to the Belgian frontier she betrayed the line of direction which the potential energy was intended to take, when the burst came. Unofficially Germany has long since proclaimed her intention to invade Belgium; it was an "open secret." The _denouement_ of August 4th, 1914, when Belgian neutrality was declared a "scrap of paper,"[140] was not the inspiration of a moment, nor a decision arrived at under the pressure of necessity, but the result of years of military preparation and planning. It had been carefully arranged that the boiler should pour forth its energy through the Belgian valve. [Footnote 140: This famous phrase was employed as far back as 1855 by a Belgian Minister in the House of Deputies, Brussels. M. Lebeau in pleading for greater military preparation used these words: "History has shown what becomes of neutralities which were guaranteed, by what may be termed a 'scrap of paper.'"] Or to draw another comparison, it is a modern variety of the wolf and the lamb fable, with this difference: the wolf has first of all swallowed the lamb, and now excuses himself by asserting that the traitorous wretch had muddied the stream.