SWITZERLAND--ANOTHER KIND OF NEUTRAL
Free Switzerland! You cannot imagine the feeling of relief I
experienced as I passed from the lands of the Hohenzollerns and
Hapsburgs to a free republic.
It was February 11, 1917. To go into the railroad station
restaurant and order an omelette and fried potatoes without a
food card and with chocolate on the side seemed in itself a
return to liberty.
Our Minister, Mr. Stovall, gave us a dinner and evening reception
so that we could meet all the notables and we lunched with the
French Ambassador (for France maintains an Embassy in Switzerland)
and dined with the British Minister, Sir Horace Rumbold, a very
able gentleman who had been Chancellor of the British Embassy in
Berlin before the war.
As war had not yet been declared between Germany and the United
States the correspondents of German newspapers waylaid me. Some
seemed to think that in spite of the insulting blow given us by
Germany, we nevertheless, scared to whiteness by the U-boat
ultimatum, would lend all our energies to bring about a German
peace.
I received a letter from one of the editors of a Swiss newspaper
published in Berne, probably inspired by the German Legation
there, asking me if President Wilson, in spite of the break in
relations, would not continue his work for peace.
We all know that Switzerland is a republic but even those of us
who have travelled there, probably because we were on a holiday,
gave little thought to the Swiss political system. Indeed before
this war we cared little about the government of any country
except our own.
The present constitution of Switzerland was adopted in 1848 and
in many particulars is modelled after that of the United States.
There are the same three great Federal powers, the Federal
Assembly, representing the legislative branch, the Federal
Council, representing the executive branch, and the Federal
Court, representing the judicial branch.
The lower Chamber is made up of representatives elected directly
by the people, and the other Chamber of members elected, as in
our Senate, two by each canton or state. The Bundesrat or Federal
Council which has all the executive powers, is elected by the
Federal Assembly and it is the Chairman of this body who is known
as the President of Switzerland. In reality he does not possess
the powers of our President, but it is the Bundesrat as a whole
which exercises the powers. Each member of this Council is
minister or head of some separate department, such as Military,
Justice and Police, Foreign Affairs, Posts and Railways, etc. The
Swiss Cantons have much power, and there is a distinct jealousy
by each canton of states' rights.
It is in Switzerland that we encounter two little friends,
sponsored by William Jennings Bryan--the Initiative and
Referendum--means by which the Swiss people are given a direct
voice in their government. By the Initiative a certain number of
voters may propose new legislation and when the requisite number
sign a petition the proposed law must then be submitted to
popular vote. This rule applies both in the separate cantons and
in the Republic as a whole.
The Referendum, more often used, provides that if the requisite
number of signers be obtained any law passed by a cantonal
legislative body or by the Federal Assembly shall be submitted to
the voters. In certain cantons the Referendum is obligatory and
every law is thus submitted to the people. In practice the
Referendum has acted as a check to advanced legislation.
The Swiss have reason to fear the designs of Prussia. As late as
1856, Prussia and Switzerland were on the edge of war. Prior to
1815 Neuchâtel acknowledged the King of Prussia as its overlord;
the Congress of Vienna, however, included this territory in the
Swiss Confederation as one of the Swiss Cantons. But Prussia, in
spite of this formal arrangement, with its usual disregard of
treaties, continued to claim Neuchâtel.
In 1848 the revolutionary influence resulted in more democratic
rule in Neuchâtel but the Prussian propagandist of that day was
at work and, in 1856, Count Pourtales' plot was discovered and
several hundred prisoners seized by the Swiss government. All
but a score were released. Frederick William IV of Prussia
demanded their instant pardon and release and ordered the
mobilisation of his army but, finally, through the intervention
of Napoleon III, the affair was settled, the prisoners released
by way of France, and the Prussian King renounced all rights over
Neuchâtel.
The Kulturkampf of Bismarck, his contest against the Roman
Catholics, had its echoes in Switzerland and it probably was due
also to German influence that until 1866 full freedom was
withheld from the Jews.
The Red Cross had its origin in Switzerland and the Geneva
Conventions have done much to bring about the adoption of better
rules of war. The Geneva Cross is the badge of international
charity and help.
Switzerland always has opened her doors to the politically
oppressed. Over ten thousand revolutionists from Baden took
refuge in Switzerland in 1848. Austria, in 1853, as a reprisal
for the alleged actions of Italians in Switzerland in conspiring
against Austria, drove thousands of Swiss citizens from that part
of Italy occupied by Austria. Also in the Franco-Prussian war the
French General Bourbaki and his army of nearly one hundred
thousand men sought an asylum in Switzerland.
The army of Switzerland is a true citizen army--an army of
universal service--and it is due to the existence of this force
that Switzerland remains an independent state in the midst of
Europe.
To stand apart in Europe is the very essence of life for
Switzerland. It is regrettable therefore that German money and
German propaganda and some sympathy for Germany among the
officers of the army should have touched the fine flower of Swiss
neutrality. A triumphant Prussia and a free Switzerland cannot
exist in the same Europe.
In Switzerland, it is in the military that we find the greatest
sympathy for Germany. In 1915, Swiss officers were discovered
working out the ciphers of other nations for the benefit of the
German armies and the punishment given, at the ensuing Court
Martial, was not only incommensurate with the offence, but was a
plain indication of the early sympathies of the Chiefs of the
Swiss Staff.
The food question between the United States and Switzerland
requires delicate handling. We like the Swiss and do not wish
them to suffer, but the Swiss must understand that our food is
our own and that we do not propose it shall go to nourish Germans
or that it shall take the place, in Switzerland, of Swiss food
sold by the Swiss to our enemies.
The President of Switzerland related to me the difficult position
in which Switzerland found herself. Iron and coal, necessary to
the industries of Switzerland, to keep the population warm and to
cook the food, came, he said, from Germany, while food was
shipped to the French Mediterranean port of Cette from America
and the Argentine, and transported across part of France to
Switzerland, so that since the war Switzerland, as the President
explained, has been dancing about; first on one side, then on the
other, in the attempt to get food through France and coal and
iron through Germany.
Everything in the office of the President was the extreme of
republican simplicity. He questioned me about the situation in
Germany, especially from the food standpoint. And I learned of
the difficulties of the Swiss. It must not be forgotten that in
Switzerland about seventy per cent of the people speak German,
twenty-three per cent, French, and seven per cent, Italian. Many
of the German-speaking Swiss, of course, sympathise with Germany.
They are the farmers, dairymen, etc., but in French-Switzerland,
in the neighbourhood of Geneva and Lausanne, the industrial
population sides with the Allies. Millions of the delicate fuses
used on shells have been manufactured in that part of Switzerland
for the Entente. In retaliation for this the Germans boycotted
Swiss watches.
The usual German-paid propaganda newspapers operate in the
principal towns. The army officers are the first to be influenced.
It is the same in Switzerland as with the officers of many armies,
solely because of the past reputation of the German military machine.
We and the civil authorities of South America must not forget
that Japan copied German military methods, that the armies of
Argentina and Chili have been trained, for years, by German
officers sent there on temporary leave of absence from the German
army.
Von Below, a German officer in Berlin who had been in the
Argentine, used to make merry over the Argentine soldiers and
said that they objected to drilling when it rained. I do not
believe this officer, but I should like to have the brave
Argentine officers hear his jokes and gibes.
We left, after three or four days in Berne, on the evening train,
for the French frontier. In the train corridors, outside the
compartments, spies stood staring at us, spies pretending to read
newspapers came into each compartment; police spies, betrayed by
heavy boots; general staff spies, betrayed by a military
stiffness; women spies; spies assorted and special. And these
gentry had followed me all over Berne--for in the neutral
countries of Europe as well as the belligerents are we constantly
reminded of the insidious methods of Kaiserism.