apologists. Fully recognizing
the import of his words, von Bethmann-Hollweg, addressing the
representatives of the German nation, put aside with admirable candor
all these sophistical artifices and rested the defense of Germany upon
the single contention that Germany was beset by powerful enemies and
that it was a matter of necessity for her to perpetrate this "wrong"
and in this manner to "hack her way through."

This defense is not even a plea of confession and avoidance. It is a
plea of "Guilty" at the bar of the world. It has one merit. It does
not add to the crime the aggravation of hypocrisy.

After the civilized world had condemned the invasion of Belgium with
an unprecedented approach to unanimity, the German Chancellor rather
tardily discovered that public opinion was still a vital force in the
world and that the strategic results of the occupation of Belgium had
not compensated for the moral injury. For this reason he framed five
months after this crime against civilization a belated defense, which
proved so unconvincing that the Bernhardi plea of military necessity
is clearly preferable, as at least having the merit of candor.

After proclaiming to the world that the German Foreign Office had
discovered in Brussels certain secret documents, which disclosed the
fact that the neutrality of Belgium at the time of the invasion was a
sham and after the civilized world had refused to accept this bald and
unsupported assertion, as it had also refused to accept the spurious
evidence of a well-known Arctic explorer, the German Foreign Office in
December, 1914 published its alleged proofs.

The first purported to be a report of the Chief of the Belgian General
Staff to the Minister of War and reported his conversations in 1906
with a military attache of the British Legation in Brussels.

The second purported to be a report of similar conversations in 1912
between the same officials.

In an authorized statement, published on January 27, 1915, Sir Edward
Grey states that there is no record of either of these negotiations in
the English Foreign Office or the War Office; but this fact is not in
itself conclusive and as there is no evidence that the documents were
forged, their genuineness should be assumed in the absence of some
more specific denial.

The documents, however, do not appreciably advance the cause of
Germany, for they disclose on their face that the conversations were
not binding on the Governments of