Part 47

AT THE VILLA ACHILLEION CORFU.

By H.T. SUDDUTH.

A haunting presence seems to fill the air, A shade of grandeur gone and e'er to be One with the legends of the Ionian Sea-- One memory more linked with Corcyra fair, Disjoined, alas! from presence otherwhere-- A lost illusion of the years once free And glorious in the kindling memory Of grand Homeric Past still lingering there!

The olive orchards crown the hills; the vine And rose still flourish on the sunny slopes As in Alcinous' Gardens; Morning opes Her eyes irradiant with the dawn divine! But now no longer at Achilleion The Kaiser wakes to see fair Eos dawn.

In Belgian or in Russian lands afar, Beneath the smoke-cloud cope of shrouded Heaven Where hissing shot and shell and War's red levin Spread far and wide the canopy of War! Where Nature shudders and seems to abhor The awful scene; where myriad souls, unshriven, From life and all its joys at once are riven, Behold the Kaiser now 'neath Mars' red star!

A stern and sombre, gray-haired figure he, And standing midst the wreck of youthful dreams Sees he at times through battle smoke the gleams Of rippling waves on blue Ionian Sea? Thinks he not sadly on the days now gone, And dreams he dreamed at fair Achilleion?

Germany's Strategic Railways

By Walter Littlefield.

Germany's explanation of her violation of Belgium's neutrality has thus far assumed two successive phases which have been placed on record by the Imperial Chancellor in as many speeches in the Reichstag. Before that body Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg said on Aug. 4, 1914:

Our troops have occupied Luxemburg, and perhaps have also found it necessary to enter Belgium territory. This is contrary to international law. The French Government has declared in Brussels that they will respect the neutrality of Belgium as long as she respects the opponent. We know, however, that France was ready to invade Belgium. France could wait; we, however, could not, because a French invasion in our lower Rhein flanks would have proved fatal. So we were forced to disregard the protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments. We shall try to make good the injustice we have committed as soon as our military goal has been reached. Who, like we, are fighting for the highest, must only consider how victory can be gained.

On Dec. 2 last Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg said:

When, on Aug. 4, I spoke of the wrong which we were committing with our march into Belgium, it was not yet established whether the Belgian Government at the last moment would not desire to spare the country and retire under protest to Antwerp.... Now, however, that it is demonstrated by documents found in Brussels how the Belgians surrendered their neutrality to England the entire world knows two facts. One is that when our troops on the night of Aug. 3-4 entered Belgian territory they were on the ground of a State which had given up its neutrality long ago....

To both these charges the Belgium Government has made reply. To the first it said that, while the assurance that France would not invade Belgium was sufficient, yet if France did take the initiative the Belgian Army stood ready to defend its territory from a French invasion.

To the second, it said that the documents found in Brussels merely showed an exchange of ideas as to how England might aid Belgium in defending her neutrality against an attack by Germany, and that there was nothing binding on either England or Belgium as to the outcome of these "conversations" of military experts.

In rebuttal Germany has asked: But why were we also not taken into the confidence of Brussels and similar plans formulated by which we might aid Belgium in repelling an invasion from either France or England?

To this the answer is simple: It has always been one of the objects of British policy to preserve Belgian neutrality, and that, aside from moral considerations, it would not be good military science for France to seek Germany via Belgium.

But this answer is capable of an expansion it has not hitherto received. Why did Belgium appear to fear an invasion from Germany and not one from England or France?

One has heard a great deal about Germany's supposed ambition to expand her North Sea coast at the expense of Denmark, Holland and Belgium, by coercing the Danish and the Dutch Governments to rebuild their coast fortifications toward England and to dismantle their forts on the German frontier. Much has also been said of Germany's contemplated invasion of the Low Countries at the time of the Agadir incident in 1911.

Documentary proof of Germany's contemplated initiative has hitherto been missing. Certain facts have, however, recently come to hand which enable one to review the German explanation. One of these facts embraces a project for railway expansion engineered and carried out on the Belgian frontier, which can leave no doubt in any reasonable mind that Germany deliberately planned to violate Belgium's neutrality the moment it became a military expediency to invade France.

A confidential agent of the British Government examined the ground in May, 1914. Part of the results of his work has been published from time to time by the military correspondents of The Times and The Morning Post of London and all is particularly designated in the British Foreign Office Memorandum secured by Prof. Hibben of Princeton on Nov. 9, 1914, and published in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Nov. 25. In this memorandum it is stated:

"The strategic dispositions of Germany, especially as regards railways, have for some years given rise to the apprehension that Germany would attack France through Belgium."

The disposition of the Third, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Germany Army Corps and the First, Fourth, and Fifth Cavalry Divisions, from Aug. 2 to 5, shown on French war maps, reveals that the attack was so made.]

If, according to jurisprudence, the planning to commit crime is legally on a par with its achievement, then Germany, for five years prior to the war, had been guilty of violating Belgium's neutrality--guilty in such a manner as to leave no doubt in the minds of Belgian, French, and English statesmen and military experts that the actual commission of the crime would some day take place.

It was Belgium's peculiar duty, as will be seen, to prepare for that day. To have taken Germany into her confidence on a point on which Germany was already fully informed would very likely have hastened the day and the tragedy thereof.

In keeping up her forts facing Germany and building none on the French frontier, in exchanging ideas with English military experts as to how best her neutrality could be defended, Belgium was preparing for the inevitable. This inevitableness is no longer a matter of moral conjecture. It is a matter of material evidence.

First, let us see what it was that Germany violated. Belgium, partly by a decree of the Vienna Congress in 1815 and partly by revolution, secured her independence from the Netherlands in 1830. The next year she inaugurated her Constitution, and by the Treaty of London, signed Nov. 15, 1831, became the god-child, as it were, of Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia, who guaranteed her neutrality for all time in the following manner:

Article 7--Belgium, within the limits specified in Articles 1, 2, and 4, shall form an independent and perpetually neutral State. She shall be bound to observe this same neutrality toward all other States.

Article 26--Consequent upon the stipulation of the present treaty there shall be peace and unity between H.M. the King of the Belgians, on one part, and H.M. the Emperor of Austria, the King of the French, the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the King of Prussia, and the Emperor of all the Russians, on the other, respectively, forever.