Goschen, neither Herr von Jagow nor the Chancellor urged that the French had violated the neutrality; the argument is purely and simply that the route by way of the Vosges is difficult, time is everything, and it is a matter of life and death to Germany to crush France as quickly as possible, in order that she may be able to meet the Russians before they reach the German frontier.  This excuse does not seem to have been very satisfactory even to those who put it forward, though it was indubitably the real reason; so vice paid homage to virtue, and Herr von Jagow urged to Prince Lichnowsky that he had ‘absolutely unimpeachable information’ that the German army was exposed to French attack across Belgium.  On the other hand, the Chancellor, as late as August 4th, seems to have known nothing of any such action by France; at any rate he made no mention of it in his speech to the Reichstag:—­

’We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law.  Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and perhaps are already on Belgian soil.  Gentlemen, that is contrary to the dictates of international law.  It is true that the French Government has declared at Brussels that France is willing to respect the neutrality of Belgium, as long as her opponent respects it.  We knew, however, that France stood ready for invasion.  France could wait but we could not wait.  A French movement upon our flank upon the Lower Rhine might have been disastrous.  So we were compelled to override the just protest of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments.  The wrong—­I speak openly—­that we are committing we will endeavour to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached.  Anybody who is threatened as we are threatened, and is fighting for his highest possessions, can only have one thought—­how he is to hack his way through.’[129]

In this double-faced position of the German Government, we have an example either of unsurpassed wickedness or of insurpassable folly.  The violation of Belgium must have been designed either in order to bring us into the quarrel, or on the supposition that, in spite of treaties and warnings, we should yet remain neutral.  Yet the foolishness of such a calculation is as nothing to that which prompted the excuse that Germany had to violate Belgian neutrality because the French were going to do so, or had done so.  In such a case undoubtedly the wisest course for Germany would have been to allow the French to earn the reward of their own folly and be attacked not only by Belgium but also by Great Britain, to whom not five days before they had solemnly promised to observe the neutrality, and whom such a gross violation of the French word must indubitably have kept neutral, if it did not throw her on to the side of Germany.  In regard to Belgium the Germans have indeed put forward the plea that the French had already violated its neutrality before war was declared.  This plea has been like a snowball.  It began with the ineffective accusation that the