such currency that it is worth while to make an end of it. The
legend is that the British Military Attache at Brussels, the late
General Barnardiston, had informed the Chief of the Belgian General
Staff of secret plans, prepared at the War Office in London, to invade
Belgium, and if necessary to violate her neutrality, in order to make an
expedition, the purpose of which was to attack Germany through that
country. The story appears to have emanated from Baron Greindl, who was
the Belgian Minister at Berlin in 1911. He had been completely
misinformed, no doubt in that capital, and there is no truth whatever in
what he had been told about what he called the "perfidious and naif
revelations" of the British Military Attache at Brussels. Him the story
represents as having said that his Minister (by whom I presume myself,
as the then Secretary of State for War, to have been intended) and the
British General Staff were the only persons in the secret. I have to
observe, in the first place, that I never during my tenure of office,
either suggested any such plan, or heard of anyone else suggesting it.
When the story was brought to my knowledge, which was not until
November, 1914, I inquired at once of General Barnardiston and of his
successor, Colonel Bridges, whether there was any foundation for it. The
reply from each of these distinguished officers was that there was none.

We were among the guarantors of Belgian neutrality, and it was of course
conceivable that, if she called on us to do so, we might have had to
defend her. It would be part of the duty of our Military Attache to
remember this, and, if opportunity offered, to ascertain in informal
conversation the view of the Belgian General Staff as to what form of
help they would be likely to ask us for. This he doubtless did, and
indeed it appears from what the Chief of the Belgian General Staff wrote
to the Belgian War Minister that the former had discussed the
contingency of Belgium desiring our help with General Barnardiston, and
had done so gladly. But even so the conversation must have been very
informal, for in the account of it by the Chief of the Belgian General
Staff there are errors about the composition of the possible British
Force which indicate that either he took no notes, or else that Colonel
Barnardiston had not thought it an occasion which required him to obtain
details from London. At all events, such talk as there was appears to
have had relation only to