Peace & Limburg Threatened

If you are a Dutchman from Utrecht, and you read something in the Utrechtsch Provinciaal en Stedelijk Dagblad, you know it must be true. Last week this leading provincial newspaper of the Netherlands shocked the rich burghers of quaint old Utrecht--and shocked Europe--by chargin, that a most nefarious secret military agreement was entered into on July 7, 1927, by France and Belgium (with Great Britain sitting in) and is still in force.

Disquieting to all Europeans was Dagblad's assertion that Belgium stands committed to mobilize a minimum of 600,000 men, and France a minimum of 1,200,000 for immediate joint action to repel aggression against either state by Germany, Italy or Spain. Such an agreement--declared by Dagblad to run for 25 years--might indeed stir profound uneasiness. But worse still, according to Dagblad, the General Staffs of France and Belgium plan to seize the offensive, in any future war with Germany, by advancing their troops across the Dutch province of Limburg. Thus Limburg would be "violated," as was Belgium!

No sooner had the Utrecht story broken last week, than it was declared by Foreign Office statesmen in Brussels and Paris to have been "entirely falsified." This, however, did not satisfy Queen Wilhelmina's large, stiff-necked, smugly garbed Foreign Minister, Jonkheer Beelaerts Van Bloklund (TIME, Aug. 27), long since nicknamed by correspondents "Blunt Beelaerts." From London, where he chanced to be last week, the Jonkheer instructed Her Majesty's diplomatic representatives in France and Belgium to demand official confirmation or denial of Dagblad's charges. Rarely has a news "scare story" been taken so seriously by a phlegmatic minister of the Dutch Crown.

Presently the Foreign Minister of King Albert of the Belgians--M. Paul Hymans --declared in the Belgian Chamber of Deputies with empressement:

"The alleged military agreement is a lie and an audacious falsehood! It was the work of a criminal!" A similar disclaimer was soon issued by French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. None the less the responsible Dutch press of Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague continued to display alarm. The extreme view was taken by Amsterdam's potent Socialist daily Volk. After graphically prophesying the "Violation of Limburg" by English troops, its editor sarcastically observed: "And this is the same England which in 1914 declared war because of the violation of Belgium's neutrality!"

So keen and piercing grew the Dutch attacks that at length they penetrated even the complacency of Sir Austen Chamberlain, lank, frigid, be-monocled Foreign Secretary of His Britannic Majesty George V. Sir Austen has been in British hot water for a good many months because he was supposed to have concluded a "Secret Anglo-French Naval Pact" (TIME, Aug. 13, et seq.) ; an last week he was palpably in terror lest the British Public become convinced that he was also mixed up in a "Secret Anglo-Franco-Belgian Military Pact." Just now John Bull distrusts "entangling alliances." Therefore all knowledge of any such agreement as that described by Dagblad of Utrecht was denied in London, last week, not only by the Foreign Office but in behalf of the War Office, the General Staff, the Admiralty, the Air Ministry and the office of the Prime Minister. Ordinarily it might have seemed that the Empire "doth protest too much," but poor Sir Austen has been so hounded of late that last week even his enemies believed that he was nervously telling the truth.

Of course the most heaven-piercing roars of indignation went up, last week, from Germany. The whole conservative and monarchist press took the line that the Fatherland's former enemies have been caught redhanded, plotting against her in violation of the Locarno Pact (TIME, Oct. 26, 1925),'wherein Britain pledged her impartial assistance to Germany no less than to France in preserving the peace of the Rhineland. Last week the German People's Party's news bureau, Controlled by Foreign Minister Dr. Gustav Stresemann, and unquestionably voicing his opinion said:

"It would profoundly disturb our confidence in the loyalty of our partners in the West if it should prove true that 20 months after Locarno and during the negotiations between France and America over the Kellogg pact France and Belgium reconfirmed the agreement which stands in such sharp contradiction to Locarno and the Kellogg agreements."

By the expression "reconfirmed" Dr. Stresemann's organ indicated his belief that the alleged Franco-Belgian agreement of July 7, 1927, is in the form of a reconfirmation and extension of the Secret Franco-Belgian Treaty of 1920. The League of Nations was supplied in 1920 with notice that this secret treaty exists, but it has never been published, as it should have been in accordance with the requirements of the Covenant of the League. Correspondents who dropped in at the German Foreign Office, last week, for tea, coffee, caviar sandwiches and little cakes, were presented with the following adroit proposition:

"If the French and Belgians expect us to believe that the Dutch charges are false, they must reveal the true text of their treaty of 1920, which, for all we know, may be even more dangerous to Peace than the alleged agreement of 1927."

About all that could be said in rebuttal to this was the semi-official comment of Le Journal des Debats at Paris:

"It is curious how the Germans always find it scandalous that states which have been the victims of their preceding aggressions should take precautions for the future."

While French and Belgian sleuths searched furiously for the culprit, one Albert Frank Heine got on a train at Amsterdam. Arriving in Brussels he was immediately arrested and rapidly confessed that he alone had concocted the forgery. An interview with Heine, containing his confession, appeared in Le Soir of Brussels even before he was arrested. "My grandfather was Heinrich Heine, the poet," said spy Heine, "and I did this as one of history's most remarkable jokes." Observers wondered, "on whom?"