et in Berlin.

The first step to be taken and the first goal to be reached concerned,
of course, the English Channel, the Dutch cities on the mouth of the
Rhine, and the iron mines of Northern France. We know to an absolute
certainty all the details of this plan.

For more than thirty years Germany had been organizing her army; she
knew every road, inn, bridge, factory, shop, and wholesale store in
Denmark and Holland, Belgium and France. In all of the larger ones she
had German agents belonging to the Pan-German League toiling as workmen
and every detail was planned out in advance.

In 1910 General von Bissing, one of the Kaiser's closest friends, was
sent to Brussels. For years he spent the summer months apparently at
the watering places near The Hague in Holland and Ostend in Belgium,
preparatory to the hour when Germany would seize Belgium and he assume
his position as Governor-General, living in Brussels.

Men nearing death tell the truth. In January of 1917 von Bissing
prepared a memorandum for the direction of Belgian affairs in His
Majesty's name and according to his wish. This document contains the
meditations of a dying man. The statements he makes, he says, contain
the views that inspired his every act in Belgium during his
administration.

In his last will and testament von Bissing, in the spring of 1917,
advises the German Government in Berlin that the time has come to throw
off all disguises. He says that at the beginning of the war it was
probably good policy to deny that the Government ever intended to annex
Belgium, but, he says, "now that we are victorious there is no reason
why we should not publish to the world the fact that we never intend to
give up one foot of the Belgian sea-coast, nor one ton of the Belgian
coal, nor one acre of the French iron mines."

He says plainly: "The annual Belgian production of 23,000,000 tons of
coal has given us a monopoly on the continent which has helped to
maintain our vitality. If we do not hold Belgium, administer Belgium in
future for our interest and protect Belgium by force of arms, our trade
and industry will lose the positions they have won in Belgium and
perhaps will never recover them."

And what about Dutch cities and seaports? On page eighteen of General
von Bissing's last will and testament he adds:

"Our frontier, in the interest of our sea power, must be pushed forward
to the sea." This sentence makes it perfectly plain that a little later
G