the buffet car, and Herr
Selingman ordered a bottle of wine.

"We will drink," he proposed, "to our three countries. In our way we
represent, I think, the industrial forces of the world--Belgium, England,
and Germany. We are the three countries who stand for commerce and peace.
We will drink prosperity to ourselves and to each other."

Norgate threw off, with apparent effort, his sleepiness.

"What you have said about our three countries is very true," he remarked.
"Perhaps as you, Mr. Meyer, are a Belgian, and you, Mr. Selingman, know
Belgium well and have connections with it, you can tell me one thing
which has always puzzled me. Why is it that Belgium, which is, as you
say, a commercial and peace-loving country, whose neutrality is
absolutely guaranteed by three of the greatest Powers in Europe, should
find it necessary to have spent such large sums upon fortifications?"

"In which direction do you mean?" Selingman asked, his eyes narrowing a
little as he looked across at Norgate.

"The forts of Liege and Namur," Norgate replied, "and Antwerp. I know
nothing more about it than I gathered from an article which I read not
long ago in a magazine. I had always looked upon Belgium as being outside
the pale of possible warfare, yet according to this article it seems to
be bristling to the teeth with armaments."

Herr Selingman cleared his throat.

"I will tell you the reason," he said. "You have come to the right man
to know. I am a civilian, but there are few things in connection with my
country which I do not understand. Mr. Meyer here, who is a citizen of
Brussels, will bear me out. It is the book of a clever, intelligent, but
misguided German writer which has been responsible for Belgium's
unrest--Bernhardi's _Germany and the Next War_--that and articles of a
similar tenor which preceded it."

"Never read any of them," Norgate remarked.

"It was erroneously supposed," Selingman continued, "that Bernhardi
represented the dominant military opinion of Germany when he wrote that
if Germany ever again invaded France, it would be, notwithstanding her
guarantees of neutrality, through Belgium. Bernhardi was a clever writer,
but he was a soldier, and soldiers do not understand the world policy of
a great nation such as Germany. Germany will make no war upon any one,
save commercially. She will never again invade France except under the
bitterest provocation, and if ever she should be driven to defend
herself, it wil