s absolutely imperative that at the time, about
the 4th of August, the possibility for such a development
should be kept open. _Even then the guilt of the Belgian
Government was apparent from many a sign, although I had not
yet any positive documentary proofs at my disposal._

This is much too vague to excuse a great crime. The guilt of Belgium
is said to be "apparent from many a sign," but what these signs are
the Chancellor still fails to state. He admits that they were not
documentary in character. If the guilt of Belgium had been so apparent
to the Chancellor on August the 4th, when he made his confession of
wrong doing in the Reichstag, then it is incredible that he would have
made such an admission.

As to the overt acts of France, all that the Chancellor said in his
speech of December 2 was "that France's plan of campaign was known to
us and that it compelled us for reasons of self-preservation to march
through Belgium." But it is again significant that, speaking nearly
five months after his first public utterance on the subject and with a
full knowledge that the world had visited its destructive condemnation
upon Germany for its wanton attack upon Belgium, _the Chancellor can
still give no specific allegation of any overt act by France which
justified the invasion_. All that is suggested is a supposed "plan of
campaign."

Following this unconvincing and plainly disingenuous speech, the
Chancellor proceeded in an authorized newspaper interview on January
25, 1915 to state that his now famous--or infamous--remark about "the
scrap of paper" had been misunderstood.

After stating that he felt a painful "surprise to learn that my
phrase, 'a scrap of paper,' should have caused such an unfavorable
impression on the United States," he proceeds to explain that in his
now historic interview with the British Ambassador,

he (von Bethmann-Hollweg) had spoken of the treaty not as a
"scrap of paper" for Germany, but as an instrument which
had become obsolete through Belgium's forfeiture of its
neutrality and that Great Britain had quite other reasons
for entering into the war, compared with which the
neutrality treaty appeared to have only the value of a scrap
of paper.

Let the reader here pause to note the twofold character of this
defense.

It suggests that Germany's guaranty of Belgium's neutrality had become
for Germany "a scrap of paper" because of Belgium