Belgian documents

Contents

PAGE

Introduction 1-6

Chapter I The Belgian Ambassadorial Reports

The external defects of the reports — Time, place and number — The writers of the reports — The Intervals — The Bosnian Crisis — The Anglo-German negotiations for an understanding — Haldane's visit to Berlin — A missing report from Greindl — Greindl's successor, Baron Beyens — Resume of the external defects of the collection 7-71

The internal defects of the reports — The personal position of the Belgian reporters — The German diplomatists' " love of truth " — Belgium, a common object of plunder — The legend of the Anglo-Belgian offensive alliance . 71-82

What should the reports prove ? What do they really prove ? — Do the reports prove the existence of a warlike aggressive conspiracy on the part of the Entente Powers ? — What is meant by the " Isolation of Germany " ? — The fear of Germany — The pacific character of the English Government — France's love of peace — A crushing document of guilt — Russia's love of peace — The purpose of the Triple Entente : the maintenance of peace — The aggressive conspiracy of Reval ? — The German chauvinists — The Morocco conflict, 1911 — Attitude of the Entente Powers during the Bosnian annexation crisis and during the Balkan War — The German Military Law and the French Three Years Law . . 83-167

The method and the result of my investigation — A state of

tension is not equivalent to war 167-177 vi CONTENTS

CHAPTERJII

PAGE

A. Belgian Grey Book I — The German ultimata to Belgium — Belgium and the guaranteeing Powers — The suspected consignment of corn 178-189

B. ' Belgian Grey Book II — Before the Austrian ultimatum

— After the Austrian ultimatum — After the outbreak of the Austro-Serbian War — After the German ultimata, — After the outbreak of the European War — Prussian- German war law — France and Belgian neutrality . . 189-242

Chapter III Baron Beyens' Book: "germany Before The War"

Deceptions and disillusionments — Opinions and views in Germany — Aims of the German war of aggression — The German Military Law and the French Three Years Law : the falsification of dates — The world war for the purposes of booty and conquest — The Crown Prince — The Triple Entente a defensive alliance — The German "Revenge for Agadir ! " — The Emperor William his own Chancellor — Bethmann and Jagow — War intriguers in Germany — The Bosnian annexation crisis — Count Berchtold — The " week of tragedy "—Belgian neutrality — Belgium, a country subject to Parliamentary control — Belgium's "faithlessness" — The Belgian Military Law — The bargaining on the subj ect of Belgium — The menace to Holland — A. letter of King Albert — Belgium dies but does not surrender — The chief actors in the drama 243-295

Introduction

The unflagging search through the archives at Brussels conducted by the German authorities has been crowned by an extraordinary degree of success, and indeed ever since the beginning of the war a kind fortune has favoured the German Government beyond the measure of their deserts in the discovery of valuable material.

After the letter, dated July 30th, 1914, from B. de PEscaille, the Belgian Charge d' Affaires in Petrograd, had been intercepted by a remarkable accident which I have fully discussed in J'accuse (p. 256), there were discovered in Brussels the famous documents containing reports of conversations between Belgian and English military officers in 1906 and 1912, out of which the attempt has been made to construe the Anglo-Belgian conspiracy of aggression. These documents also I have already subjected to strict examination in J'accuse (p. 213 et seq.) and The Crime (Vol. I, p. 420 et seq.).

The above discoveries date from the year 1914. The year 1915 was, however, much more productive. The archives of the Belgian Foreign Office, which were strangely and imprudently left behind by the Belgian Government in Brussels, were rummaged through, and in the process there were found a great many reports from Belgian Ambassadors to the Government in Brussels. These were first of all published separately, and were later collected in a volume under the title Belgian Documents 1905-1914 (Berlin, Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Son).

This publication provided, as they say, meat and drink to the voluntary and involuntary defenders of the German

VOL. IV B

Government. All those who had undertaken the thankless task of demonstrating the German Government's innocence of this war threw themselves with a veritable voracity on these Belgian ambassadorial reports, and wherever the heralds of the German war of defence make their voice heard, their appeal is accompanied by, and based on, a reference to those Belgian Diplomatists who long years before the war had branded the policy of encirclement initiated by King Edward, who had exalted to the heavens the Germari 1 love of peace, and had already in anticipation ascribed to the Entente Powers the guilt of a future European war.

In their introduction to the collected documents the German Government have sounded the leitmotiv for this hymn of defence. They ascribe to the Belgian ambassadorial reports " an unusual interest as a ' source ' for the antecedents of the war," they praise this " objective diplomatic account of international politics before the outbreak of the war " and see in it " material in arraignment of the policy of the Entente Powers . . . than which nothing more annihilating can be imagined . . . With great penetration the Ambassadors recognised at a very early date how the peace of the world, guaranteed for decades by the Triple Alliance, was imperilled by the political efforts of the Entente."

There then follows, still as an ostensible resume of the Belgian ambassadorial reports, the familiar litany regarding " England's jealousy " of Germany's industrial and commercial development, the " menacing increase of French chauvinism," " Isvolsky's ambition and rage for revenge, as well as the Pan-Slav Press with its hostility to Germany," etc. In contrast to these, " the German Emperor's love of peace " and " the pacific tendencies of German policy and the great patience of Germany in face of the provocations of England and France " are emphasised and extolled.

This underlying motive, designed to accuse the Entente Powers and at the same time to defend the Central Powers, is to be found everywhere in Pan-German literature years before the war, and in a stronger form after the outbreak

INTRODUCTION 3

of the war. There is not a thought or a phrase contained in the German Government's introduction to their publication from the Belgian archives, which had not for years been used and abused as a cliche in the Pan-German Press. For the German Defenders of the Fatherland (seated at the writing-table) the novelty of the documents and the profit to be derived from them are confined to the fact that they now believe, or profess to believe, that they hear in the mouth of neutral diplomatic observers a confirmation of their accusations against the Entente Powers — a confirmation which they have now endeavoured to exploit in a truly usurious manner. It does not matter what book one opens in the German or pro-German literature of the war : every writer who has taken as his task the defence of Germany and Austria, those innocent victims of a ruthless attack, produces columns of extracts from the Belgian ambassadorial reports, which are brought to an end with the triumphant exclamation : Here are the guilty placed in the pillory ; by their criminal policy England, Russia, and France provoked the war ; Germany and Austria are innocent of the catastrophe.

A book written in the French language under the title La Verite, from the pen of an alleged Frenchman, which seeks, as a kind of pendant to J'accuse, to hold up to the French Government and their Allies the chronicle of their offences, discusses in its 137 pages almost nothing but the Belgian ambassadorial reports ; in other words it confines itself to the more remote antecedents of the war, and with the nimbleness of a conjurer glides over the immediate antecedents, the critical days from July 23rd to August 4th. If this is what occurs in a French pamphlet, it is easy to imagine the way in which German writers turn the Belgian documents to advantage. We have elsewhere seen that Schiemann in his Slanderer, written against J'accuse, discusses the more remote antecedents of the war alone, because these can be twisted about and tampered with to any extent with the help of quotations, snippets, anecdotic accounts of plots hatched at royal visits, secret ministerial discussions, naval manoeuvres, etc., but that on the contrary he disposes in a few sub-

B 2 sidiary sentences of the history of the twelve critical days, which permits and demands a close and accurate study of the documents. From the very beginning of the war there existed in German apologetic literature, as may well be understood, a tendency to place in the foreground the more remote and obscure past on which it was more difficult to throw light, and to allow the clear, unambiguous present which permitted no misunderstanding to fade as far as possible into the background. When Schiemann wrote his Slanderer pamphlet, the isolated publications from the Belgian archives had scarcely begun ; he was therefore compelled to support his accusations against the Entente Powers by drawing on the collection of snippets which he himself had kept for years. To-day the German Government have bounteously spread the table for all these purveyors of arguments from the past ; they need only stretch out their hands and among the 119 courses represented by the Belgian ambassadorial reports they will always find the tit-bit which they just happen to need to prove what they are at the moment concerned to demonstrate.

In view of this situation, it appears to me inadmissible to pass over the Belgian ambassadorial reports more or less in silence, as is done by the greater part of the Entente Press. Arguments are never met by being ignored. On the contrary, the other side is furnished with the plea that silence is preserved because of the realisation of the justice of the arguments which cannot be refuted. In failing to discuss the Belgian ambassadorial reports, or in not according them the treatment which their importance merits, we should be open to the same charge as was rightly brought against the German Government, when they suppressed the Tsar's despatch of July 29th, when they ignored the revelations of Giolitti (not even mentioned until the present day), when from the beginning they asserted that they had exercised " pressure on Vienna," but failed to produce evidence in support of their contention until the later, indeed very late, revelations of Bethmann (which I have elsewhere characterised),

INTRODUCTION 5

when they concealed, and even yet conceal, from the German people the significance of Sazonof's formulae for an understanding of July 30th and 31st, which, even at the last moment, would have prevented the outbreak of war. The system of burying things in silence is the most false and the most fatal that can be applied in an investigation into historical truth. It is fatal not only for the ascertainment of truth itself, but also for him who applies it, inasmuch as it lays upon him the suspicion of insincerity.

This system I do not propose to follow. I have nothing to fear from the Belgian ambassadorial reports so far as my thesis of arraignment is concerned. On the contrary, I should be apprehensive of attack, if I ignored this apparently incriminating material against the Entente Powers, this alleged evidence in exoneration of the Central Powers. I should be accused of partiality, and an attempt would thus be made to enfeeble the annihilating force of my accusation.

The fact that the Entente Powers on their part and the Belgian Government also have hitherto in part made no reply, and in part only an insufficient reply to the German publication, is one which I regret exceedingly and regard as a grave political mistake. And I hold this view more especially in the interests of the establishment of truth. The Belgian Government above all should have felt called upon to subject the German publication to a critical examination, to point out its shortcomings and its gaps, to make these good as far as possible, to explain and to base the judgments of their Ambassadors by reference to the time at which, the circumstances in which, and the persons by whom they were written, in short to confront the picture produced by the German publication, at first sight an unfavourable one, with an illuminating and supplementary picture of the other side, calculated to weaken or entirely obliterate the one-sided impression conveyed by this publication.

Nothing of this kind, so far as I am aware, has hitherto been done either by the Belgian or by the Entente Governments. I have therefore had to undertake the laborious task — so far as I know, the first in the whole literature of the war which is not influenced by Germany — of examining the German publication, of sifting and investigating it with a view to determining its value as evidence for the more remote antecedents of the war. Since I do not enjoy the good fortune of being inspired, supported, or provided with material by any Government, I have been thrown back on the study of the documents themselves, and in drawing my conclusions I was forced to restrict myself to what the documents do and what they do not contain.

It is true that to complete the material I was able to refer to the two Belgian Grey Books of 1914 and 1915, and further to the book written by Baron Beyens, the last Belgian Ambassador in Berlin, and later Prime Minister : Germany before the War. 1 If the Belgian ambassadorial reports dating from the period before the war are placed before us as historical documents to be admitted in evidence, it must be permissible by the same right to invoke Belgian documents dating from the period immediately before the war, and to assign to them the same force as evidence. If the German Government produce for the purposes of their demonstration eleven reports only from the two years' ambassadorial activity of Baron Beyens — concluding with a report of July 2nd, 1914, that is to say a month before the outbreak of war — it must be permissible to rely on a book written by this same diplomatist, giving a connected and detailed account of his impressions regarding German policy and German conditions during the last years of peace down to the outbreak of the war.

The material, which I will hereafter discuss, thus comprises :

I. The " Belgian Documents 1905-14," published by the German Government.

II. The Belgian Grey Book of 1914.

III. The Belgian Grey Book of 1915.

IV. The above-mentioned book of Baron Beyens.

1 [English translation : Nelson.]