ill remain neutral
your Excellency will be good enough to declare that we must,
as a guarantee of its neutrality, require the handing over
of the fortresses of Toul and Verdun; that we will occupy
them and will restore them after the end of the war with
Russia. A reply to this last question must reach here before
Saturday afternoon at 4 o'clock._

That is how Germany wanted peace at the moment when she declared war!
That is how sincere she was in pretending that we obliged her to take
up arms for her defense! That is the price she intended to make us pay
for our baseness if we had the infamy to repudiate our signature as
Prussia repudiated hers by tearing up the treaty that guaranteed the
neutrality of Belgium!

It was explained that the above document has not previously been
published, because the code could not be deciphered: the French
Foreign Office succeeded only a few days before in decodifying the
document.

Moreover, Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, on March 18, 1918, acknowledged
the accuracy of M. Pichon's quotation and contented himself to declare
that "his instructions to Von Schoen were justified."

APPENDIX II

HOW GERMANS TREAT AN AMBASSADOR

This document is quoted from the French "Yellow Book," page 152:

_From Copenhagen_
_French Yellow Book No. 155_

M. Bapst, French Minister at Copenhagen, to
M. Doumergue, Minister for Foreign Affairs.

COPENHAGEN, AUGUST 6, 1914.

The French Ambassador at Berlin, M. Jules Cambon, asks me to
communicate to your Excellency the following telegram:

I have been sent to Denmark by the German Government. I have
just arrived at Copenhagen. I am accompanied by all the
staff of the Embassy and the Russian Charge d'Affaires at
Darmstadt with his family. The treatment which we have
received is of such a nature that I have thought it
desirable to make a complete report on it to your Excellency
by telegram.

On the morning of Monday, the 3rd of August, after I had, in
accordance with your instructions, addressed to Herr von
Jagow a protest against the acts of aggression committed on
French territory by German troops, the Secretary of State
came to see me. Herr von Jagow came to complain of acts of
aggression which he alleged had been committed in Germany,
especially at Nuremberg and Coblenz b