o their territory."

The full text of this important letter is as follows:

In speaking to the Belgian Minister today I said, speaking
unofficially, that it had been brought to my knowledge that
there was apprehension in Belgium lest we should be the
first to violate Belgian neutrality. I did not think that
apprehension could have come from a British source.

The Belgian Minister informed me that there had been talk,
from a British source which he could not name, of the
landing of troops in Belgium by Great Britain, in order to
anticipate a possible dispatch of German troops through
Belgium to France.

I said that I was sure that this Government would not be the
first to violate the neutrality of Belgium, and I did not
believe that any British Government would be the first to do
so, nor would public opinion here ever approve of it. What
we had to consider, and it was a somewhat embarrassing
question, was what it would be desirable and necessary for
us, as one of the guarantors of Belgian neutrality, to do if
Belgian neutrality was violated by any power. For us to be
the first to violate it and to send troops into Belgium
would be to give Germany, for instance, justification for
sending troops into Belgium also. What we desired in the
case of Belgium, as in that of other neutral countries, was
that their neutrality should be respected, and, as long as
it was not violated by any other power, we would certainly
not send troops ourselves into their territory. I am, &c.,

(Signed) E. GREY.

Document No. 3 contains, according to Dr. B. Dernburg, the personal
views of the Belgian Minister in Berlin, but it does not, in any way,
indicate the existence of an agreement between Belgium and England
against Germany.

It is impossible to say that these documents constitute a proof of an
agreement between England and Belgium against Germany, unless one
accepts the idea that Germany had a right to violate Belgium's
neutrality and that all measures taken as a precaution against
violation of neutrality must therefore have been taken against
Germany.

The documents contain merely conversations between military officers
in regard to a possible future co-operation of their armies in the
event of violation of Belgian territory by Germany. They never even
resulted in an agreement between those Governmen