BERNE, Jan. 20.
The President of the Swiss Confederation is the symbol of a democracy so perfect that the man in the street is not quite sure who the President is. He knows that he is one of a council of seven, and that he is elected for one year, and that is all. In the Federal Palace, the Berne Westminster and Downing Street, the anonymity is almost as complete. Officers pass and repass in the corridors—one of the signs, like the waiting military motor cars at the door, of mobilization—but this does not change the spirit, simple and civilian, of the interior.
M. Motta, Chief of State for this year, is a man of early middle life. He is the best type of Swiss, a lawyer by profession, whose limpid French seems to express culture as well as candor. Nor could one doubt for a moment the sincerity of his speech. Speaking on the Swiss position in the war, M. Motta was anxious to remove the impression that it was colored, dominated by the existence of the German-speaking cantons, more numerous than the French. "Of course," he said, "we have our private sympathies, which incline us one way or the other, and there is the language tie—though here we are greatly attached to our Bernese patois—but I would have you believe the Swiss are essentially just and impartial, they look at the war objectively.
"We have good-will toward all the nations. Need I say that we respect and esteem England? Have you not found that you are well received? There is no antagonistic feeling against any one. Our neutrality is imposed upon us by our position, a neutrality that is threefold in its effects, for it is political, financial, and economic. Italy, France, Germany, Austria, are our neighbors; we send them goods, and we receive supplies from them in return."
We then talked of the army, of that wonderful little army which, at this moment, is watching the snowy passes of the Alps. Two years ago it is said to have impressed the Kaiser on manoeuvres; perhaps for that reason he has refrained to pass that way. Outside, in the slippery streets, over which the red-capped children passed with shouts of glee, I had seen something of the preparations; the men, steel-like and stolid, marching by, the officers, stiff and martial-looking, saluting right and left under the quaint arcades of this charming city. Colored photographs of corps commanders adorned the windows and seemed to find a ready sale. These things pointed in the same direction. Switzerland, posted on her crests, was watching the issue of the terrific struggle in the plains.
"We must defend our neutrality," the President said, "our 600 years of freedom. There is not a single man in the country who thinks differently. I am an Italian-Swiss, one of the least numerous of our nationalities, but there is only one voice here as elsewhere—only one voice from Ticino to Geneva. That we shall defend our neutrality is proved by the great expenditure on our army; otherwise, it would be the height of folly."
The President spoke of army expenditure, of the simple army system, of the reorganization which had been carried out some years before. Switzerland was spending £20,000 a day, a large sum for a small country. Since the day when the general mobilization had been decreed—some classes have now been liberated—Switzerland had spent £4,500,000. It was a lot of money.
The army, of course, was a militia; some few officers were professional soldiers, others were drawn from a civil career and were doctors, lawyers, engineers, and merchants. In 1907 the country had consented to lengthen the periods of training in what are quaintly called the "recruits' schools" and "rehearsal schools." In the former category the men do sixty-five days' training a year, in the latter forty-five.
"I assure you," continued M. Motta, "whatever sympathy the German-Swiss may feel toward Germany, the French-Swiss toward France, or the Italian toward Italy, it is nothing like as warm and as intimate as that which each Swiss feels toward his fellow-Swiss."
This was the national note which dominated everything. At first there was a little difficulty in the councils of the nation. Some showed a tendency to lose their balance, but that phase had passed, and each day, I gathered, purely Swiss interests were coming uppermost.