Of course, officially, Switzerland is absolutely neutral, but it is asking too much of human nature to expect the individual to have no opinion. The fact, therefore, that French Switzerland sympathizes unofficially with France, and German Switzerland with Germany, has had its effect on the Swiss mobilization, which has called the French-speaking Swiss to the German border and the German-speaking to the French. This fact is about the only one that has leaked out of the movements of our army. The secrecy maintained is absolute, reigning even in the ranks of mothers and sweethearts, to say nothing of wives, who all of them are proud to show their loyalty by at least refraining from saying where their men are posted. It is said that Switzerland is armed, mined, and barb-wired along every foot of her frontier, and it has lately transpired that this perfect defense, and the fact that practically every soldier is a sharpshooter, led the Germans to give up their plan of breaking through Switzerland to get at France, and made them choose Belgium instead.
Switzerland has always been a sort of sanctuary for refugees, principally political, and now, especially, she is full of all kinds of strangers. In the first days of the war there were streams of Italians, suddenly thrown out of work in Germany and Austria and packed off home, who passed through Switzerland in every stage of want and despair. Every big town organized its soup kitchens at the railway station; women of the best families took the matter in hand, and so the huddling, apprehensive columns were passed from one town to another, fed, clothed, and comforted, finally landing in their own country, safe and sound. An enthusiastic letter of thanks has been published in the papers, emanating from these grateful "Chinks," (Swiss for "Dago,") and ending up with "Eviva la Svizzera!" ("Long live Switzerland!")
Germany began to clean out the Russians on the first day of the war. Hordes of them poured into our country with fistfuls of ruble notes that no one would take, and with a growing hunger that they could not appease. A doctor was called to visit a band of twelve that were herded together in two rooms of a cheap hotel here. He expected to find emigrants; instead, they were people of the highest refinement. Their story was pitiful. They had been inmates of a private sanatorium in Germany and were summarily dismissed at the outbreak of the war. Separated from their trunks, ill and weak, and too confused to think clearly, they arrived in Berne with nothing but their piles of ruble notes, that no one would take, and the fear of death in their hearts.
They were quartered in the hotel by the committee, and the physician was called. One woman of the party begged him to take a ring, worth many hundred dollars, and give her $10 for it, so that she might buy some comforts for herself and daughter. Of course, the whole party was immediately removed to a private sanatorium, where its members were cared for, and where, little by little, they recovered their calm and gathered up their scattered wits.
Very far from calm is a Swiss who has just returned from captivity in the interior of Morocco on account of being mistaken for a German. The day of the declaration of war the French authorities ordered him out of his beautiful Moroccan home, giving him forty-eight hours to pack up. His wife was visiting her mother here in Berne, and one can fancy her state of mind on receiving a telegram to the effect that her husband and babies, twins of 7 and a little fellow of a year and a half, were ordered off, with the nurse, to parts unknown, as political prisoners. In vain the man protested he was Swiss. His name was German, and he was in a German firm; therefore he was a "canaille d'allemand"; so off they went. At first they were packed on a little steamer whose capacity was thirty people—there were 150 of them, and they cruised along the Mediterranean for a night and a day.
At last they lay before Casa Blanca, and, on asking why they were not landed, received the reply that the authorities must first of all clear the pier, as the boatload of refugees landed there the day before had been received with showers of stones and vile epithets from the mob, whose hate of the Germans knew no bounds. When they finally landed they were quartered in a riding school with 150 others, where they all slept on the tanbark. They had coffee for breakfast, and during the three days they were there had a thick soup each day for dinner, and nothing more. One day it was bean soup, one day peas, and the third day lentils. They were finally transported to the interior of Morocco and assigned to the barracks of the Foreign Legion, the members of which are now fighting in France, and here they passed strange, uncomfortable, heart-breaking days.
Finally, when summoned to deliver up his money, the man said: "I shall telegraph this outrage to Berne."
"What, are you Swiss?" was the officer's surprised question.
"Yes."
"Well, keep your money," said the officer; and a few days later Mr. X., through the efforts of our State Department and our Minister to France, was released and joined his wife in Switzerland. This story was told me by the agonized grandmother, whose tears flowed fast at the thought of the hardships to which her daughter's babies had been exposed.