Page:Justice in war time by Russell, Bertrand.djvu/35

Rh abroad, able to assert with absolute certainty that no such event took place; but the military events of last August are sufficient proof, one would have supposed, even to the credulity of an enemy. No English prisoners were taken by the Germans in their early battles with Belgians, and so far as I have heard they do not even allege that they encountered any English before they reached Mons.

The assertion that the military conversations constituted a breach of neutrality is supported by omitting the fact that all the arrangements were conditional upon the Germans first invading Belgium. It was well known that this was likely to happen in the event of war, and that England and France would, in that case, attempt the defence of Belgium if possible. If, when the time came, the Germans had respected Belgian neutrality, they might have pointed to the conversations as proof of groundless suspicion. But in view of what has occurred, it is absurd to pretend that England and Belgium had no right to consider in common how they should meet a threatening danger which proves to have been only too real. The German accusation, like the charges of atrocities brought against Belgians, is merely a symptom of a bad conscience, not an outcome of any calm consideration of the evidence.

My other illustration concerns the dates of mobilisation. It is usually asserted in England that Austria's general mobilisation preceded Russia's, whereas the opposite seems almost certainly the truth. At the time, the true view was generally accepted in England, just as Bethmann-Hollweg admitted that the invasion of Belgium was a wrong. But just as this admission