ECISIVE BATTLE dictated envelopment, and envelopment dictated the use of Belgian territory. The German General Staff pronounced it a military necessity; Kaiser and Chancellor accepted it with more or less equanimity. Whether it was advisable, whether it was expedient in view of the probable effect on world opinion, especially neutral opinion was irrelevant. That it seemed necessary to the triumph of German arms was the only criterion. Germans had imbibed from 1870 the lesson that arms and war were the sole source of German greatness. They had been taught by Field Marshall von der Goltz, in his book The Nation In Arms, that “We have won our position through the sharpness of our sword, not through the sharpness of our mind.” The decision to violate Belgian neutrality followed easily.
---The Guns of August
© Barbara W. Tuchman 1962
The Macmillan Company, New York
Excerpt from the 11th printing (1972) p. 21
Pulitzer Prize winner for General Nonfiction, 1963
“Our advance in Belgium is certainly brutal,” Moltke wrote to Conrad on August 5 (1914), “but we are fighting for our lives and all who get in the way must take the consequences.” He did not have in mind the consequences to Germany. But the process which was to make Belgium the nemesis of Germany had begun.
---The Guns of August
© Barbara W. Tuchman 1962
The Macmillan Company, New York
Excerpt from the 11th printing (1972) p. 174
Belgium clarified issues, became to many the "supreme issue" of the war. In America, said a historian of his times looking back, Belgium was the "precipitant" of opinion and Louvain was the climax of Belgium...
By the end of August people of the Allied nations were persuaded that they faced an enemy that had to be beaten, a regime that had to be destroyed, a war that must be fought to a finish. On September 4 (1914) the British, French and Russian governments signed the Pact of London engaging themselves "not to conclude peace separately during the present war."
---The Guns of August
© Barbara W. Tuchman 1962
The Macmillan Company, New York
Excerpt from the 11th printing (1972) p. 321-322