on state of general European conflict,
the third German blunder, perhaps the most momentous, and certainly
the most extraordinary: that by which Germany secured the hitherto
exceedingly uncertain intervention of England against herself.

Of all the great Powers involved, Great Britain had most doubtfully to
consider whether she should or should not enter the field.

On the one hand, she was in moral agreement with Russia and France; on
the other hand, she was bound to them by no direct alliance, and
successive British Governments had, for ten years past, repeatedly
emphasized the fact that England was free to act or not to act with
France according as circumstances might decide her.

Many have criticized the hesitation, or long weighing of circumstance,
which astonished us all in the politicians during these few days, but
no one, whether friendly to or critical of a policy of neutrality, can
doubt that such a policy was not only a possible but a probable one.
The Parliamentarians were not unanimous, the opposition to the great
responsibility of war was weighty, numerous, and strong. The
financiers, who are in many things the real masters of our
politicians, were all for standing out. In the face of such a
position, in the crisis of so tremendous an issue, Germany, instead of
acting as best she could to secure the neutrality of Great Britain,
simply took that neutrality for granted!

Upon one specific point a specific question was asked of her
Government. To Great Britain, as we have seen in these pages, the
keeping from the North Sea coast of all great hostile Powers is a
vital thing. The navigable Scheldt, Antwerp, the approaches to the
Straits of Dover, are, and have been since the rise of British
sea-power, either in the hands of a small State or innocuous to us
through treaty. Today they are the possession of Belgium, an
independent State erected by treaty after the great war, and
neutralized by a further guarantee in 1839. This neutrality of Belgium
had been guaranteed in a solemn treaty not only by France and England,
but by Prussia herself; and the British Government put to the French
and to the Germans alike the question whether (now they were at war)
that neutrality would be respected. The French replied in the
affirmative; the Germans, virtually, in the negative. But it must not
be said that this violation of international law and of her own word
by Germany automatically caused war with England.

_The Ge