6 JANUARY 1917, Page 10

The Note proceeds to give a summary of the events

which le d immediately to the war, and points out how Belgium, was invaded by an Empire which had guaranteed her neutrality, and which has had the assurance to proclaim that treaties were " scraps of paper " and that " necessity knows no law." Germany's so-called offers of peace rest on a war-map of Europe alone, which represents nothing more than a superficial and passing phase' of the -situa- tion, and not the real strength of the belligerents. A peace concluded upon these conditions is dismissed by the Note as impossible.