CHAPTER VII 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.