There was once another neutral State, the city and district of Cracow,
also established by a treaty to which Great Britain was a signatory.
Three of the signers considered the conditions developing in Cracow to
be so threatening that they abolished Cracow as an independent State.
Great Britain sent a polite note of protest, and dropped the matter.
Since that time, however, two Hague Conferences have been held and
certain rules agreed upon concerning the rights and duties of neutrals.
The Belgian status of inviolability rests on these rules, called
conventions, rather than on the Treaty of 1839. During the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Mr. Gladstone very clearly stated that he
did not consider the Treaty of 1839 enforceable. Great Britain,
therefore, made two new treaties, one with France and one with Prussia
(quoted and discussed in Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 14, 1914) in
which she promised to defend Belgian neutrality, by the side of either
France or Prussia, against that one of them who should infringe the
neutrality.
These treaties were to terminate one year after peace had been
concluded between the contestants.
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