Sunday, November 29th. This morning Donait and I presented ourselves at the American Legation and delivered our dispatches. It is the custom to send all mail for the American Embassy in Berlin to the Legation in Berne, where it is opened, checked over, and re-forwarded. In the afternoon we paid our respects to the Military Attaché, Major Lawton.
German newspapers are accessible to us this morning for the first time since July. It is most interesting to view the reverse of the shield.
Monday, November 30th. Berne is almost as much in a state of war as Paris. The whole Swiss army of 500,000 is mobilized and has been on the frontiers since the end of July. The nation is on a war footing and seems to be about equally suspicious of all the nations concerned in the “present unpleasantness.” A certain quiet confidence, however, pervades Switzerland, a confidence which even a small nation may feel when it has an effective army. Every normal Swiss citizen is a trained soldier, for in his twentieth year he undergoes from sixty to ninety days of intensive military instruction.
I speak of the efficiency of the Swiss army. I might add that the Germans would undoubtedly have preferred to invade France through Switzerland rather than through Belgium. Their flank would then not have been exposed to the disastrous pressure of the British army and navy. The fact of the matter is that they feared the British and the Belgians combined less than the Swiss. So great are the advantages of reasonable military preparedness.
Preparedness and military system are not synonymous with a large standing army. A small, well-prepared army may be the nucleus around which an efficient military system can be built. The Swiss organization is at present most interesting, for it has saved that country from becoming involved in the present war. Had Belgium been as well prepared as was Switzerland, Germany would have observed sacred treaties and invaded France across the Franco-German border.
The efficient Swiss military system, which can put 500,000 trained and organized men into the field, costs less than ten million dollars a year. Our ineffective American standing army of 85,000 men costs us one hundred millions a year, on a peace footing. The difference is due to the fact that the frugal, thrifty Swiss, like most other nations, do not consider civilians competent to meddle with military matters—or that national defense should be subject to the vagaries of party politics—or that an army is a fit subject for the experiments of amateur social scientists.
In spite of the cruel calamities which have in the past overtaken the United States because of her perpetual unpreparedness, we still insist that because we do not believe in war we therefore need no military system. It is as if we held that since we do not wish to be ill we will abolish physicians—or as if we believed that because we do not desire to have our homes burn down we will do away with the fire department and with insurance. No matter how pacific a nation may be it cannot avoid war by signing peace treaties, either singly or by the bushel. Reasonable military preparedness is the only valid insurance against disastrous and ruinous war.