efend its territory from a French invasion.

To the second, it said that the documents found in Brussels merely
showed an exchange of ideas as to how England might aid Belgium in
defending her neutrality against an attack by Germany, and that there
was nothing binding on either England or Belgium as to the outcome of
these "conversations" of military experts.

In rebuttal Germany has asked: But why were we also not taken into the
confidence of Brussels and similar plans formulated by which we might
aid Belgium in repelling an invasion from either France or England?

To this the answer is simple: It has always been one of the objects of
British policy to preserve Belgian neutrality, and that, aside from
moral considerations, it would not be good military science for France
to seek Germany via Belgium.

But this answer is capable of an expansion it has not hitherto received.
Why did Belgium appear to fear an invasion from Germany and not one from
England or France?

One has heard a great deal about Germany's supposed ambition to expand
her North Sea coast at the expense of Denmark, Holland and Belgium, by
coercing the Danish and the Dutch Governments to rebuild their coast
fortifications toward England and to dismantle their forts on the German
frontier. Much has also been said of Germany's contemplated invasion of
the Low Countries at the time of the Agadir incident in 1911.

Documentary proof of Germany's contemplated initiative has hitherto been
missing. Certain facts have, however, recently come to hand which
enable one to review the German explanation. One of these facts embraces
a project for railway expansion engineered and carried out on the
Belgian frontier, which can leave no doubt in any reasonable mind that
Germany deliberately planned to violate Belgium's neutrality the moment
it became a military expediency to invade France.[8]

[Footnote 8: Compare the railway maps of Northern France and Northern
Germany in "Cook's Continental Time Tables" for the years 1908 and 1914.

A confidential agent of the British Government examined the ground in
May, 1914. Part of the results of his work has been published from time
to time by the military correspondents of The Times and The Morning Post
of London and all is particularly designated in the British Foreign
Office Memorandum secured by Prof. Hibben of Princeton on Nov. 9, 1914,
and published in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Nov. 25. In this memorandum it is
stated: