In this double-faced position of the German Government, we have an example either of unsurpassed wickedness or of insurpassable folly. The violation of Belgium must have been designed either in order to bring us into the quarrel, or on the supposition that, in spite of treaties and warnings, we should yet remain neutral. Yet the foolishness of such a calculation is as nothing to that which prompted the excuse that Germany had to violate Belgian neutrality because the French were going to do so, or had done so. In such a case undoubtedly the wisest course for Germany would have been to allow the French to earn the reward of their own folly and be attacked not only by Belgium but also by Great Britain, to whom not five days before they had solemnly promised to observe the neutrality, and whom such a gross violation of the French word must indubitably have kept neutral, if it did not throw her on to the side of Germany. In regard to Belgium the Germans have indeed put forward the plea that the French had already violated its neutrality before war was declared. This plea has been like a snowball. It began with the ineffective accusation that the French were at Givet, a town in French territory, and that this constituted an attack on Germany, though how the presence of the French in a town of their own could be called a violation of their neighbour's neutrality it is difficult to see. From that it has gradually grown into a more formidable story of the French supplying a garrison to Liège. There can be little doubt that all these attempts by Herr von Jagow to claim that the French violated Belgian neutrality are another illustration of Swift's dictum to the effect that 'as universal a practice as lying is, and as easy a one as it seems', it is astonishing that it has been brought to so little perfection, 'even by those who are most celebrated in that faculty'.[130] IV _England and Servia_.