During the paper polemics of
the past months these detached words of Gladstone have been freely used
by Germany's defenders and apologists to maintain that Great Britain of
1870 would not have deemed the events of 1914 a casus belli, and that
its entrance into the present war on account of the violation of
Belgium's neutrality was merely a pretext. During the course of this
controversy Gladstone's attitude has in various ways been grossly
misrepresented, Dr. von Mach of Harvard even stating in the columns of
THE NEW YORK TIMES that Gladstone had declared the Treaty of 1839 "to be
without force." But, apart from such patent distortions, Gladstone's
real position is apparently not clearly defined in the mind of the
general public, which is merely seeking for the unadulterated truth,
regardless of its effect upon the case of any one of the belligerents.
Shortly after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 the
Prussian Ambassador in London informed Gladstone, then Prime Minister,
that some time prior to the existing war France had asked Prussia to
consent to the former country's absorption of Belgium, and that there
was in the possession of the Prussian Government the draft of a treaty
to this effect in the handwriting of M.
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