CHAPTER XIX
THE DECLARATION OF WAR ON BELGIUM
THE BREACH OF FAITH A POLITICAL BLUNDER
There still remained a hard nut for the Imperial Chancellor to crack, the solution of the task set him by the military: namely, the justification of the invasion of Belgium. This invasion was, like the war against France, decided upon as soon as hostilities with Russia had broken out.
In 1871, Germany had annexed Alsace-Lorraine. This was not in order to liberate the inhabitants of this territory. On the contrary, they offered a desperate resistance to being torn from France. Bismarck demanded the annexation not for national but for strategic reasons, with a view to obtaining a better strategic frontier against France, in order to be nearer Paris in a future war and to be able to threaten it more quickly than had been the case at the outbreak of war in 1870.
For the sake of this military advantage Germany had immeasurably impaired her international political position, had raised an eternal feud between herself and France, driven the latter into the arms of Russia, roused the armament rivalry and the constant danger of war in Europe, and laid the seeds of the unfavourable position in which the German Empire entered the world war in 1914.
