We went through Württemburg and entered Switzerland by way of Schaffhausen. The two officers left us at the last stop on the German side. I had taken the precaution before we left Berlin to find out their names, and, as they left us, I gave each of them a gold cigarette case inscribed with his name and the date.
At the first station on the Swiss side a body of Swiss troops were drawn up, presenting arms, and the Colonel commanding the Swiss army (there are no generals in Switzerland), attended by several staff officers, came on the train and travelled with us nearly to Zurich.
I started to speak French to one of these staff officers, but he interrupted me by saying in perfect English, "You do not have to speak French to me. My name is Iselin, many of my relations live in New York and I lived there myself some years."
At Zurich we left the German special train, and were met on the platform by some grateful Japanese, the American Consul and a number of French and Swiss newspaper reporters, thus ending our exodus from Germany.
CHAPTER XVIII
LIBERALS AND REASONABLE MEN
I have already expressed a belief that Germany will not be forced to make peace because of a revolution, and that sufficient food will be somehow found to carry the population during at least another year of war.
What then offers a prospect of reasonable peace, supposing, of course, that the Germans fail in the submarine blockade of England and that the crumbling up of Russia does not release from the East frontier soldiers enough to break the lines of the British and French in France?
I think that it is only by an evolution of Germany herself toward liberalism that the world will be given such guarantees of future peace as will justify the termination of this war.
There is, properly speaking, no great liberal party in the political arena in Germany. As I have said, the Reichstag is divided roughly into Conservatives, Roman Catholics, or Centrum, and Social Democrats. The so-called National Liberal party has in this war shown itself a branch of the Conservative party, and on some issues as bitter, as conservative, as the Junkers themselves. Herr Bassermann and Herr Stresemann have not shown themselves leaders of liberal thought, nor has their leadership been such as to inspire confidence in their political sagacity.