German Offer to Belgium

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 23, 28 January 1937, Page 8

German Offer to Belgium

AMERICAN AUTHOR’S REVELATION. It is revealed in The Letters and Journal of Brand Whitlock, published recently, that the war-time American Minister to Belgium deliberately withheld from the Belgian authorities an important German message (says the Daily Telegraph). It came to Whitlock through his colleague at The Hague, Dr. Henry van Dyke, and was received on August 8, 1914. Declaring that it was only through the force of circumstances that Germany had entered Belgium, the Note added: “Now that the Belgian army has upheld the honour of its arms by its heroic resistance to a very superior force, the German Government begs the King of the Belgians and the Belgian Government to spare Belgium the further horrors of war. Tho German Government is ready for any compact with Belgium which can be reconciled with their arrangement with France. Germany once more gives her solemn assurance that it is not her intention to appropriate Belgian territory to herself, and that such an intention is far from her thoughts.” The message concluded that Germany was ready to evacuate Belgium as soon as the state of the war would allow her to do so.

Mr Whitlock was amazed at the “cold, cynical, brutal effrontery” of the words. He wroto in his journal:

“What cruel hand had written them? What dark and evil mind hud conceived them? Had that clumsy intelligence in Berlin no conception of the fact that there are, after all, in this world such words as honour and faith? Only a week ago a promise more solemn than this had been broken. Why regard this as more reliable than that other?”

Mr Whitlock put the message on the table. He had made his decision: “I would communicate no such dirty bribe to the Belgian Government. I knew perfectly well that tho King would scorn any such suggestion, he is too pure; too noble for that.” The question was how to justify this action. The solution was novel. The message carried no cipher groups for identification. Therefore it might not be authentic, though, Mr Whitlock admits, it was “too essentially German for doubt.’ ’ Dinner at Eight! The journal contains brilliant pic tures of Brussels life under what is called the “German infestation,” and a good story is told of Sir Francis Vi*.liers, the British Minister. A meeting of the Diplomatic Corps had been called one evening, and Sir Francis did not attend. . This, stated Mr Whitlock, was his reply when asked why he was absent; “But, I say, dear colleagues, the Papal Nuncio called the meeting for half-past 8; most stupid of him, I mean to say, stupid. . . . Why, I dine at 8! ” Mr Whitlock comments: “Nothing could be more typically British. Let wars rage, thrones totter, and empires fall; 'I dine at S.’ ”

There is strong criticism of the British attitude towards the Commission for Relef in Belgium, and it is declared that Mr Hoover, who was chief organiser of the Commission, “was sick at England's unpreparedness for this

But, Mr Hoover added, however, “They will muddle through. The Englishman likes to muddle through.”