SWITZERLAND
We have become so used to regarding Switzerland as an
all-the-year-round playground, and the Swiss as a race of
hotel-keepers, waiters, and guides, that many people were quite
surprised to learn, when Switzerland mobilised, that she could put an
army of 250,000 in the field.
Switzerland, which has been for centuries the battlefield of European
nations, has understood that even her perpetual neutrality, guaranteed
by the Powers, could not save her from the danger of an invasion if she
did not boast a fairly strong army, and in 1874 she organised a proper
military service.
A regular army as known in other countries Switzerland does not
possess, but she has an admirably organised militia, an army of citizen
soldiers. The German Emperor, during his last visit to Switzerland,
in September, 1912 (during the first one, nineteen years before, he
had a much more enthusiastic reception), assisted at the manœuvres of
the Swiss army, and his dream of a German Switzerland as a "Germanic
Dependence" must have had a very severe shock.
His reception was nothing more than polite, and all the shouting and
flag-waving part had to be done by a large portion of the 300,000
German subjects living in Switzerland, who took the trouble to go to
Berne specially to see their Kaiser in his carefully chosen uniform.
William II., being now aware that the Swiss nation does not mean to
preserve her neutrality by sending troops only to the Franco-Italian
frontier, will realise that the fact that the Swiss President carefully
avoided showing him, or any of his officers, the fortifications of the
German frontier was not a mere coincidence.
It was just a few days after this famous visit that a Franco-Swiss
newspaper printed this wonderful little paragraph about the German
Emperor:--"People have so often talked about the cult of peace without
believing in it that one may finally be permitted to believe in it
without talking about it."
In any case, the Kaiser, as soon as he was back in Berlin, sent to the
Swiss Government 2,000 yards of grey-blue cloth to dress a group of
the Swiss infantry troops, which at that time were still wearing very
dark uniforms. The Kaiser observed that those uniforms would be very
conspicuous in wartime, and his present of cloth was most appreciated,
and lately, with a slight modification in the shade, adopted.
Troops dressed in this way are now watching the German frontier.
Though the Swiss recruit has a very short training, he is quite
effective as a soldier. As a schoolboy he has a proper physical
training, and when he leaves school he generally joins a rifle club. At
twenty he is liable to military service, which for every Swiss lasts
a period of twenty-five years. During the first year he is called out
for recruits' service, which in the infantry lasts forty-five days, in
the cavalry eighty days, and in the field artillery fifty-five days.
On completing his first year he joins the Élite, or active army, and
remains in it for twelve years. On leaving the Élite men pass to the
Landwehr, in which they remain until their twenty-fifth year of service.
A third line of troops for home defence is furnished by the Landsturm,
which is composed of all able-bodied citizens between the ages of
seventeen and fifty who are not embodied in the Élite or Landwehr.
The Federal Army thus constructed may be said in round numbers to
consist of:--Élite, 135,000; Landwehr, 82,000; and Landsturm, 63,000;
total, 280,000--an astonishing figure if one considers the total
population of Switzerland and how cheaply this army is obtained.
* * *
Before the beginning of this war one must admit there was a sort of
ill-feeling in the Swiss Confederation against France. To protect her
national industries the Republic used to be very strict on the subject
of imports from Switzerland, and the custom tariffs for exportation of
goods to France used to be much higher than those upon exports into
Germany or Italy. Since the war broke out everything has changed; the
example of Belgium and of what happened to that unfortunate nation,
for the sole reason that she was "in the way of the Germans," has made
Switzerland think how analogous is her own situation with the situation
of Belgium.
The so-called "verbal treaty" existing with Germany stood little chance
of being respected after the way in which the regular treaty with
Belgium had been violated.
At the very beginning of the campaign there was great fear of France
trying to pass through Switzerland, fear increased artificially by the
Swiss Press, which has always been frankly in favour of Germany. But
now the Swiss population begins to realise how things are really going,
and their attitude is really and strictly neutral.
It appears that the respect and ingratiating attitude towards Germany
shown by Switzerland at the beginning of the war was the usual
behaviour of the small weak boy towards the school bully. Moreover,
there was some excuse for this. It is very difficult to obtain any
papers other than German in Switzerland, and all the calumnies printed
in them were taken by the Swiss population for gospel truth.
Now some of the Berne papers begin to show a little more independence,
and print side by side the different official _communiqués_ of the
various nations.
The Government has begun to think seriously about the food supply
question. Supposing Italy should go to war--which, it is realised, may
quite well happen any day--what would happen to Switzerland, surrounded
by Germany, Austria, France, and Italy? Where could she get the
foodstuffs she is bound to import?
Large depôts and stores of all kinds have been arranged, and severe
measures have been taken against contraband runners, who up to October
last were carrying on extensive operations. The Government has
monopolised the mills and the whole of the wheat reserves, as well as
all imports, which are taken up by the Government and sold at standard
prices and in no larger quantities than is absolutely indispensable.
All the Swiss people I came across seemed to be occupied more by
their commercial interests, badly hit as they are by the war, than by
anything else. They only wish for the war to cease, the sooner the
better.
There are hardly any foreigners in Switzerland, though some Swiss
hotel-keepers have been advertising both in England and Germany: in
England that the German managers and waiters had been removed; in
Germany that no English guests would be received in their hotels.
However, business was very slack, and everybody seemed very pessimistic
about the coming summer season.
Though the sentence, "Politically we have nothing to get and nothing to
lose," is often repeated, I met somebody who showed me that the great
crisis has awakened hopes of national development even in this quiet,
business-like little country.
At the Bubenberg, a large Berne café of world-wide fame, I met a Swiss
ex-officer whose white hair saved him from the danger of the Landsturm
service. In front of him, on the marble table, a large map of East
Switzerland was wide open, and he was tracing a few mysterious lines
on it with a blue pencil. When I asked him about it, he told me that
the north frontier of Switzerland could never be safe unless it was a
"natural" one.
"Our canton of Shaffausen," said he, "is completely isolated
among German land. We want this little piece of territory between
Ludnigshafen, on the Boden-see, and Bargen. We want also the Wutach
frontier, from the spot where this river marks our frontier with
Germany down to the Rhine."
"And what about your neutrality?" I asked him.
"Oh, the neutrality, _mon ami_, could not mean much in a general
modification of the European map; and beside that, _vous savez l'apetit
vient en mangeant_; and if everybody has a piece of Germany, why should
we keep out of the feast?"
It will be just a hundred years next September since the Prussian
Principality of Neuchatel became a Swiss canton. Well, after all, the
old Swiss captain's idea would be a rather smart way of celebrating a
centenary.