Face to Face with Kaiserism

by James W. Gerard

The Red Cross had its origin in Switzerland and the Geneva Conventions have done much to bring about the adoption of better rules of war. The Geneva Cross is the badge of international charity and help.

Switzerland always has opened her doors to the politically oppressed. Over ten thousand revolutionists from Baden took refuge in Switzerland in 1848. Austria, in 1853, as a reprisal for the alleged actions of Italians in Switzerland in conspiring against Austria, drove thousands of Swiss citizens from that part of Italy occupied by Austria. Also in the Franco-Prussian war the French General Bourbaki and his army of nearly one hundred thousand men sought an asylum in Switzerland.

The army of Switzerland is a true citizen army—an army of universal service—and it is due to the existence of this force that Switzerland remains an independent state in the midst of Europe.

To stand apart in Europe is the very essence of life for Switzerland. It is regrettable therefore that German money and German propaganda and some sympathy for Germany among the officers of the army should have touched the fine flower of Swiss neutrality. A triumphant Prussia and a free Switzerland cannot exist in the same Europe.

In Switzerland, it is in the military that we find the greatest sympathy for Germany. In 1915, Swiss officers were discovered working out the ciphers of other nations for the benefit of the German armies and the punishment given, at the ensuing Court Martial, was not only incommensurate with the offence, but was a plain indication of the early sympathies of the Chiefs of the Swiss Staff.

The food question between the United States and Switzerland requires delicate handling. We like the Swiss and do not wish them to suffer, but the Swiss must understand that our food is our own and that we do not propose it shall go to nourish Germans or that it shall take the place, in Switzerland, of Swiss food sold by the Swiss to our enemies.

The President of Switzerland related to me the difficult position in which Switzerland found herself. Iron and coal, necessary to the industries of Switzerland, to keep the population warm and to cook the food, came, he said, from Germany, while food was shipped to the French Mediterranean port of Cette from America and the Argentine, and transported across part of France to Switzerland, so that since the war Switzerland, as the President explained, has been dancing about; first on one side, then on the other, in the attempt to get food through France and coal and iron through Germany.

Everything in the office of the President was the extreme of republican simplicity. He questioned me about the situation in Germany, especially from the food standpoint. And I learned of the difficulties of the Swiss. It must not be forgotten that in Switzerland about seventy per cent of the people speak German, twenty-three per cent, French, and seven per cent, Italian. Many of the German-speaking Swiss, of course, sympathise with Germany. They are the farmers, dairymen, etc., but in French-Switzerland, in the neighbourhood of Geneva and Lausanne, the industrial population sides with the Allies. Millions of the delicate fuses used on shells have been manufactured in that part of Switzerland for the Entente. In retaliation for this the Germans boycotted Swiss watches.

The usual German-paid propaganda newspapers operate in the principal towns. The army officers are the first to be influenced. It is the same in Switzerland as with the officers of many armies, solely because of the past reputation of the German military machine.

We and the civil authorities of South America must not forget that Japan copied German military methods, that the armies of Argentina and Chili have been trained, for years, by German officers sent there on temporary leave of absence from the German army.