These offers and menaces, following on the shock of the ultimatum, were cunningly devised to tame our spirit still further. All had been thought out: the suddenness of the blow, after the plausible assurances of the German minister at Brussels had quieted all tremors; the interval of only twelve hours for a reply; nay, the very moment chosen for sending the Note, seven o’clock in the evening. Night that brings reflection, night with its unnerving darkness, would no doubt work upon the minds of the hapless victims, forced to choose between suicide and dishonour. Yet the German calculations were foiled. At the King’s Council, hastily summoned to the royal palace, there was no sign of giving way. The ministers present, from within and without the Cabinet, had shown all due regard for our eastern neighbour, and till then had firmly believed in the honesty of his intentions. The more cruel their disillusion, the more bitter their wrath must have been against the trickster who could lightly break the most solemn pledges. The King, with an unflinching resolve to do his full duty, first called upon the military members to set forth all the possibilities of defence. They were to speak the plain truth, without minimizing the fearful odds that our army had to face. When the Staff had told its tale, the same thrill of heroism swept the whole Council off its feet, even as on the next day it was to seize the whole Parliament and nation. Before the meeting dispersed, the reply to the German Note, of which a rough draft had already been made out by the Foreign Office, was drawn up and approved. On the following day, before the interval had expired, it was handed to the German minister. That was all. The absorbing drama, played within the space of a few brief hours, was over.
The style of the Royal Government’s answer, which no Belgian can read without tears of patriotic pride, is as noble and dignified—I cannot think that any one will refute this—as that of the German document is false and constrained. In a few words it brushes aside the pretexts fabricated by the Berlin Cabinet. It scorns to utter any useless complaint. It tries no subterfuge, no diplomatic shift that may leave it a loophole for revoking its words. It goes straight to the point. After declaring Belgium’s unswerving loyalty to her international obligations in the past, it proudly announces that her Government has chosen, without faltering for a moment, the path of duty and honour. “The Belgian Government, by accepting the proposals put before it, would not only sacrifice its own honour, but would betray its duty towards Europe. It is determined to repel any assault upon its rights by every means in its power.”