ium forms an independent State of perpetual neutrality.

That is to say, Belgium was forbidden, in case of war, to take the part
of any of the belligerents.

Since then Belgium has fulfilled all her neutrality obligations; she has
acted in a spirit of absolute impartiality. She has left nothing undone
to maintain and make respected her neutrality. Germany's obligation to
respect Belgian neutrality was even more emphatically affirmed by one of
Germany's greatest men, by the creator of the empire. Prince, then
Count, Bismarck, wrote to Baron Nothomb, Belgian Minister in Berlin, on
the 22nd of July, 1870, as follows:

In confirmation of my verbal assurances, I have the honor to give
in writing a declaration which, in view of the treaties in force,
_is quite superfluous_, that the Confederation of the North and its
allies will respect the neutrality of Belgium on the understanding,
of course, that it is respected by the other belligerents.

On July 31 of the present year the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs
and the Secretary General of the Foreign Office had a long conversation
with the German Minister in Brussels. It was pointed out to him that in
the course of the controversy raised in 1911 by the introduction of the
Dutch project for the fortification of the Scheldt, that his
predecessor, Herr von Flotow, had assured the Belgian Government that in
the event of a Franco-German war Germany would not violate Belgian
neutrality; that Mr. Bethmann-Hollweg, the Imperial Chancellor, had
given similar assurance; that in 1913 Herr von Jagow, the German Foreign
Secretary, had made similar statements of a reassuring character in the
budget committee of the Reichstag concerning the neutrality of Belgium;
to which the German Minister replied that he was aware of the
conversation with his predecessor, and that "he was certain that the
sentiments expressed at that epoch had not changed."

On August 2nd, in the course of the day, the German Minister in
Brussels, M. De Below Saleske, gave an interview to the newspaper Le
Soir, and declared that Belgium had nothing to fear from Germany. He
went so far as to employ this expression:

You will see, perhaps, your neighbor's house on fire, but your
house will remain intact.

The same day, at 7 o'clock in the evening, he communicated the following
note to the Belgian Government:

The German Note.

The German Government has received unimpeacha