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 commodity to bargain with, but a fundamental condition of her independence; it was her formal duty to preserve it, or at least attempt to preserve it, by force of arms against any invasion. Should any of the guarantors assail it the others were bound to come to its defence. It has been suggested that both France and Great Britain were very ill-prepared to fulfil this obligation; German writers have, indeed, tauntingly gloated over the fact, for it is a fact. The bad faith of Germany was so long evident—her very army manœuvres having been, in fact, based on the hypothesis of a rapid invasion of Belgium—that defensive measures were plainly called for. But two points must be remembered. For one thing, the moral question remains unaltered. You do not justify a murderer by saying that the police ought to have been there to prevent him committing the crime. For another, any new defensive organisation adopted would certainly have been represented by Germany as a clear proof of intended aggression, and would in all likelihood have precipitated the outbreak.

It is necessary to bear all these circumstances in mind in order to appreciate at its full worth the heroic decision of Belgium. Deliberately, with the courage not of hot blood but of conscience and honour, she lost the world in order to gain her own soul. In the treachery of Germany there was lacking not even one episodical baseness. Her representatives lied up to the last moment. Two