n in 1868, when the Eastern Railway Company of France
sought to obtain railway concessions in Belgium, it was the latter
country which refused its consent, and in the subsequent parliamentary
debate the step was designated an act of neutrality."

From this extract it is evident that Professor Frank has undermined his
own case. Belgian neutrality was intended by the great powers to be the
corner-stone of the European balance of power. During the last forty
years Germany's carefully meditated increase of armaments on land and
sea threatened to dislodge the corner-stone. When the Conference of
London declared Belgium to be a permanently neutral country, there was
apparent equality of power on each side of the stone. In 1870 the
Franco-German war showed that the balance of power was already disturbed
at this corner of the European edifice. Still Germany's pledged word was
considered sufficient guarantee of the _status quo_.

Since 1870 the potential energy on the German side of the corner-stone
has increased in an unprecedented degree, and this huge energy has been
consistently converted into concrete military and naval forces. This
alteration in the potential _status quo ante_ has been partly the result
of natural growth, but in a still greater degree, to Germany's doctrine
that it is only might which counts.

Another German professor[138] had defined the position in a sentence:
"Germany is a boiler charged to danger-point with potential energy. In
such a case is it a sound policy to try to avert the possibility of an
explosion by screwing down all its safety-valves?" Recognizing that
Belgian neutrality has existed for many years past solely on Germany's
good-will, it became the right and urgent duty of the other signatory
powers to endeavour to strengthen the corner-stone. Germany absolutely
refused to relax in any way the pressure which her "potential energy"
was exercising at this point, therefore it was necessary above all for
France and Great Britain to bolster up the threatened corner.

[Footnote 138: Hermann Oncken (Heidelberg), in the _Quarterly Review_,
October, 1913. The author of the article charges Great Britain with
screwing down the valves, which is a deliberate distortion of the truth.
Britain has always opened her markets free to German goods and admitted
the same privileges to her rival--so far as these did not run contrary
to established rights--in all parts of the world. With regard to
territorial exp