Happy Switzerland that has thought out a system of military service which imposes little burden on the national exchequer and no burden at all on the national content, and which is yet withal highly efficient if the experts are to be believed! I quote from one of them (Lieut.-Col. G. F. Ellison):
Of the Swiss Army, as a war machine, it is impossible to write in terms other than those which, to anyone who has never witnessed its performance, must, I fear, appear somewhat too laudatory. That it is perfect in all its details, or that it is the same highly finished instrument that the French or the German army is, I do not pretend to assert, but I do unhesitatingly affirm, and in this opinion I am supported by more competent judges than myself, that taken as a whole it is, for war purposes, not unworthy, so far as it goes, to court comparison with the most scientifically organised and most highly trained armies of the Continent. In some respects it even surpasses all other armies in its readiness for war, for of no other military force in Europe can it be stated that the establishment in personnel is the same both for peace and war, and there is certainly no other country, that I am aware of, a fourth of whose army is annually mobilised for manœuvres on exactly the same scale of equipment and transport as it would be for actual warfare.
For the Englishman there is certainly no army in the world which can afford more food for serious reflection than that of Switzerland. He will learn, too, to appreciate what, for a sum that appears insignificant when compared with the military expenditure of other States, can be done towards producing for Home defence a really well-trained force under a militia system, provided that the system is based on universal liability to military service, and that all ranks alike bring goodwill and intelligence to bear on their allotted task. While he watches this army there need be no grave misgivings in his mind such as, perhaps, he may experience elsewhere, lest, in spite of all the pomp and splendour, the burden that such military display means to a nation may be crushing it beyond endurance.
And that was written before the revised law of April 12, 1907, which was the subject of a general Referendum. By its acceptance the Swiss people intimated their desire to have the army maintained at such a degree of efficiency as would ensure their independence and neutrality, and agreed to several improvements in the system of training imposing further obligations on the citizen soldiers.
In the present day the Swiss have no navy, and no need of one, and "Admiral of the Swiss Navy" is a title equal to that of the Seigneur de Château Rien. But once upon a time the "Swiss admiral" did exist. He was an Englishman named Colonel Williams, who in 1799 was in service with the Zurich government and commandeered a small fleet on Lake Zurich, having orders to oppose with it the French army. When the French, under Masséna, completely routed the allied armies of Austria and Russia, Colonel Williams calmly watched the battle from the lake. Then, enraged at his own inaction, he discharged his crews, scuttled his vessels, and took to flight.
[CHAPTER V]
SOME LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS
Switzerland has not produced much native literary genius. The literary associations of the land are mostly concerned with strangers who went to it as a land of refuge or as visitors. True, in the thirteenth century Zurich was famous for its poets, for its share in the making of the Nibelungen and the Minnelieder, and for the "Codex Manesse"—the collection of the works of 150 German and Swiss poets of the day. Again in the days of Rousseau—perhaps the most famous of Swiss writers—there was quite a herd of sentimental novelists at Lausanne. But, on the whole, it cannot be said that the Swiss have shown themselves conspicuously a people of imagination. In war they have a magnificent record: in science and in philosophy a record above the average: in poetry and romance they have little to show. But if colonists and visitors who associated themselves strongly with Swiss life be taken into account, then Switzerland becomes one of the most interesting literary centres of Europe.