ipis-] OF NEUTRALIZED TERRITORY. 25 



" There is, I admit, an obligation of the treaty. It is not necessary, nor 

 would time permit me to enter into the complicated question of the nature 

 of the obligation under that treaty. But I am not able to subscribe to the 

 doctrine of those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to the 

 assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is binding on 

 every party to-day irrespectively altogether of the particular position in which 

 it may find itself at the time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee 

 arises. The great authorities upon foreign policy to whom I have been accus- 

 tomed to listen, such as Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston, never to my 

 knowledge took that rigid, and if I may venture to say so, that impracticable 

 view of the guarantee. The circumstance that there is already an existing 

 guarantee in force is, of necessity, an important fact, and a weighty element 

 in the case to which we are bound to give full and ample consideration." 



Sir Edward Grey added to this his own statement, that : 



" The treaty is an old treaty — 1839. It is one of those treaties which are 

 founded not only on consideration for Belgium which benefits under the 

 treaty, but in the interests of those who guarantee the neutrality of Belgium." 



Unfortunately this is true. That treaty is evidently an obligation 

 of convenience. Germany, upon her side, took the same view. 

 The German Chancellor in his speech before the German Parlia- 

 ment alluded in this connection to " the wrong which we were doing 

 in marching through Belgium." The German government declared 

 that " it had in view no act of hostility against Belgium." It ex- 

 pected the Belgians to maintain an attitude of friendly neutrality 

 toward Germany, — in return for which it undertook, at the conclu- 

 sion of peace, to guarantee the independence of the Belgian king- 

 dom in full. The Chancellor hoped that the Belgian authorities 

 would yield to the inevitable and " retire to Antwerp under protest." 

 I do not intend to pursue this inquiry in the direction in which 

 it has given rise to the controversy on both sides, and possibly the 

 world over, as to whether the Allies were ready to pass through 

 Belgium if the Germans had not done so. We are concerned 

 merely with the law. Of course, if Belgium had taken the slightest 

 step toward uniting her forces with either of the belligerents as 

 against the others, she would have forfeited her attitude of neu- 

 traHty and become herself a belligerent, subject to be treated as an 

 enemy. And this would be the end of her independent existence; 

 for that is based upon the neutrahty which the convenience of the 

 great powers has determined upon as the condition precedent of 

 her national life. 



