By Ethel Therese Hugli.
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Jan. 10, 1915.]
BERNE, Nov. 18.--Question: What is Switzerland?
Answer: A small neutral State entirely surrounded by war!
At the first glance such would seem to be the actual state of affairs,
for neutral Italy, our southern neighbor, takes up but a small part of
our border; to the west we have France, to the north Germany, and to the
east Austria, all engaged in deadly combat, all realizing that this time
the loser will go down, never to come up again as a power of the first
class. The drawback in being so neutral and so near the stage of all
these dramatic proceedings, is that we are overwhelmed with "latest
dispatches." Our papers bristle with the victories, defeats, denials,
assertions, protests, accusations, blame, as contained in the dispatches
of the various news agencies.
Reuter is the official English agency. His news is taken with a generous
pinch of salt. The German agency is Wolff, whose proud boast it is never
to have announced a single German defeat. As a consequence, he is also
taken with a large pinch. The French pin their faith to Havas, whose
rose-colored dispatches have earned for themselves the name of
"Havas-Lies." The Austrians believe in the Wiener agency, whose
dispatches are too busy saying: "The reports of Austrian defeats, spread
by the enemy, are absolutely untrue," to have time for any real news;
while in Italy--"neutral Italy"--the Italian news agency shows such
unholy glee over German reverses as to make an impartial person sniff
rather suspiciously at its "neutrality." The Wesbuick agency in Russia,
severely censored from Petrograd, gives a dry, business-like view of the
White Bear's progress in the east. And so it goes.
Of course, officially, Switzerland is absolutely neutral, but it is
asking too much of human nature to expect the individual to have no
opinion. The fact, therefore, that French Switzerland sympathizes
unofficially with France, and German Switzerland with Germany, has had
its effect on the Swiss mobilization, which has called the
French-speaking Swiss to the German border and the German-speaking to
the French. This fact is about the only one that has leaked out of the
movements of our army. The secrecy maintained is absolute, reigning even
in the ranks of mothers and sweethearts, to say nothing of wives, who
all of them are proud to show their loyalty by at least refraining from
saying where their men are posted. It is said that Switzerland is armed,
mined, and barb-wired along every foot of her frontier, and it has
lately transpired that this perfect defense, and the fact that
practically every soldier is a sharpshooter, led the Germans to give up
their plan of breaking through Switzerland to get at France, and made
them choose Belgium instead.
Switzerland has always been a sort of sanctuary for refugees,
principally political, and now, especially, she is full of all kinds of
strangers. In the first days of the war there were streams of Italians,
suddenly thrown out of work in Germany and Austria and packed off home,
who passed through Switzerland in every stage of want and despair. Every
big town organized its soup kitchens at the railway station; women of
the best families took the matter in hand, and so the huddling,
apprehensive columns were passed from one town to another, fed, clothed,
and comforted, finally landing in their own country, safe and sound. An
enthusiastic letter of thanks has been published in the papers,
emanating from these grateful "Chinks," (Swiss for "Dago,") and ending
up with "Eviva la Svizzera!" ("Long live Switzerland!")
Germany began to clean out the Russians on the first day of the war.
Hordes of them poured into our country with fistfuls of ruble notes that
no one would take, and with a growing hunger that they could not
appease. A doctor was called to visit a band of twelve that were herded
together in two rooms of a cheap hotel here. He expected to find
emigrants; instead, they were people of the highest refinement. Their
story was pitiful. They had been inmates of a private sanatorium in
Germany and were summarily dismissed at the outbreak of the war.
Separated from their trunks, ill and weak, and too confused to think
clearly, they arrived in Berne with nothing but their piles of ruble
notes, that no one would take, and the fear of death in their hearts.
They were quartered in the hotel by the committee, and the physician was
called. One woman of the party begged him to take a ring, worth many
hundred dollars, and give her $10 for it, so that she might buy some
comforts for herself and daughter. Of course, the whole party was
immediately removed to a private sanatorium, where its members were
cared for, and where, little by little, they recovered their calm and
gathered up their scattered wits.
Very far from calm is a Swiss who has just returned from captivity in
the interior of Morocco on account of being mistaken for a German. The
day of the declaration of war the French authorities ordered him out of
his beautiful Moroccan home, giving him forty-eight hours to pack up.
His wife was visiting her mother here in Berne, and one can fancy her
state of mind on receiving a telegram to the effect that her husband
and babies, twins of 7 and a little fellow of a year and a half, were
ordered off, with the nurse, to parts unknown, as political prisoners.
In vain the man protested he was Swiss. His name was German, and he was
in a German firm; therefore he was a "canaille d'allemand"; so off they
went. At first they were packed on a little steamer whose capacity was
thirty people--there were 150 of them, and they cruised along the
Mediterranean for a night and a day.
At last they lay before Casa Blanca, and, on asking why they were not
landed, received the reply that the authorities must first of all clear
the pier, as the boatload of refugees landed there the day before had
been received with showers of stones and vile epithets from the mob,
whose hate of the Germans knew no bounds. When they finally landed they
were quartered in a riding school with 150 others, where they all slept
on the tanbark. They had coffee for breakfast, and during the three days
they were there had a thick soup each day for dinner, and nothing more.
One day it was bean soup, one day peas, and the third day lentils. They
were finally transported to the interior of Morocco and assigned to the
barracks of the Foreign Legion, the members of which are now fighting in
France, and here they passed strange, uncomfortable, heart-breaking
days.
Finally, when summoned to deliver up his money, the man said: "I shall
telegraph this outrage to Berne."
"What, are you Swiss?" was the officer's surprised question.
"Yes."
"Well, keep your money," said the officer; and a few days later Mr. X.,
through the efforts of our State Department and our Minister to France,
was released and joined his wife in Switzerland. This story was told me
by the agonized grandmother, whose tears flowed fast at the thought of
the hardships to which her daughter's babies had been exposed.
And now come the Belgian refugees to us, a most pitiable band. French
Switzerland has the honor of beginning the movement which has made
possible the bringing to Switzerland and placing in hundreds of
households these innocent victims of this hideous war. In addition,
subscriptions have been opened in various papers, and thousands of
francs have been gathered and sent to this most unfortunate of nations.
The movement to receive Belgian refugees is gaining ground, too, in
German-speaking Switzerland, though here the sympathy for Germany stands
somewhat in the way of a full and open hospitality. Some papers write:
"Let the Belgians stay in their country. The Germans will take care of
them. Let those that have fled return to their hearths and take up their
daily vocations. In this way the misery of the country--which is
certainly not entirely the fault of Germany (a hit at England)--will be
alleviated. Furthermore, Switzerland's harboring of Belgian refugees is
a demonstration against Germany. Let Switzerland beware of doing
anything to prejudice her neutrality. Finally, there are in our own
country plenty of miserable poor people to exercise our charity upon,
and every one knows that charity begins at home."
Articles have appeared in the German papers expressing surprise at
Switzerland's hospitality, and to all of these carpers, at home and
abroad, these people who have acted out of the purest motives of charity
and love for their neighbor, answer somewhat as follows:
The Belgians that have come to take refuge in Switzerland wished nothing
better than to stay in their own land. They were driven out in hordes,
at the point of the sword, by the Germans. It would be hard to convince
them that they ought to go back and that the Germans will take care of
them. Some of these miserable beings did return, hoping to pick up their
life again after the great shock. They found their village a heap of
stones, their business ruined. How could they, therefore, "return to
their hearths and take up their daily vocations"? If Switzerland's
charitable impulse is to be construed as a demonstration against
Germany, then must Switzerland reflect that any excuse will do, and that
her neutrality has the same validity in Germany's eyes as had Belgium's.
No country, thinking and acting objectively, could find in this movement
anything to "prejudice Switzerland's neutrality."
As for charity beginning at home, one might add that it does not end
there. It would be hard to find a country whose charitable organizations
are so all-embracing as here. In times of peace there are committees who
sew for and otherwise look after every kind of human misery. There are
the tuberculous poor, the girl-mothers, the creches, the new-born
babies, the soup kitchens, the visiting trained nurses, the clinics, the
blind, the vicious, the vacation colonies, the swimming lessons, the
gymnastics, the tramps and their woodyard, &c., and every organization
has its Christmas tree, with distribution of presents when the season of
rejoicing comes around. Now that the war is here, and every available
man is standing at the frontier guarding his Fatherland from invasion,
the soldiers have been added to the list of charities, and none of the
old has been stricken off.
In addition to babies' socks, every one has time to knit a pair of
soldiers' socks, and in every dainty work basket, lying next to
neglected fancy work, there are sure to be some half-finished warm
woolen gloves or wristlets or knee warmers for the boys at the frontier.
If Switzerland can keep up her home charities and look out so splendidly
for her soldiers at the same time, and still have the means and the will
to welcome and care for the poor and unhappy of a sister folk whose fate
might very well have been her own, it is surely not a subject for
adverse criticism, but, on the contrary, for encouragement. And who was
it who said: "For as much as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did
it unto Me"?