CHAPTER XVII
SWITZERLAND--ANOTHER KIND OF NEUTRAL
Free Switzerland! You cannot imagine the feeling of relief I experienced as I passed from the lands of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs to a free republic.
It was February 11, 1917. To go into the railroad station restaurant and order an omelette and fried potatoes without a food card and with chocolate on the side seemed in itself a return to liberty.
Our Minister, Mr. Stovall, gave us a dinner and evening reception so that we could meet all the notables and we lunched with the French Ambassador (for France maintains an Embassy in Switzerland) and dined with the British Minister, Sir Horace Rumbold, a very able gentleman who had been Chancellor of the British Embassy in Berlin before the war.
As war had not yet been declared between Germany and the United States the correspondents of German newspapers waylaid me. Some seemed to think that in spite of the insulting blow given us by Germany, we nevertheless, scared to whiteness by the U-boat ultimatum, would lend all our energies to bring about a German peace.
I received a letter from one of the editors of a Swiss newspaper published in Berne, probably inspired by the German Legation there, asking me if President Wilson, in spite of the break in relations, would not continue his work for peace.
We all know that Switzerland is a republic but even those of us who have travelled there, probably because we were on a holiday, gave little thought to the Swiss political system. Indeed before this war we cared little about the government of any country except our own.
The present constitution of Switzerland was adopted in 1848 and in many particulars is modelled after that of the United States.
There are the same three great Federal powers, the Federal Assembly, representing the legislative branch, the Federal Council, representing the executive branch, and the Federal Court, representing the judicial branch.
The lower Chamber is made up of representatives elected directly by the people, and the other Chamber of members elected, as in our Senate, two by each canton or state. The Bundesrat or Federal Council which has all the executive powers, is elected by the Federal Assembly and it is the Chairman of this body who is known as the President of Switzerland. In reality he does not possess the powers of our President, but it is the Bundesrat as a whole which exercises the powers. Each member of this Council is minister or head of some separate department, such as Military, Justice and Police, Foreign Affairs, Posts and Railways, etc. The Swiss Cantons have much power, and there is a distinct jealousy by each canton of states' rights.
It is in Switzerland that we encounter two little friends, sponsored by William Jennings Bryan--the Initiative and Referendum--means by which the Swiss people are given a direct voice in their government. By the Initiative a certain number of voters may propose new legislation and when the requisite number sign a petition the proposed law must then be submitted to popular vote. This rule applies both in the separate cantons and in the Republic as a whole.
The Referendum, more often used, provides that if the requisite number of signers be obtained any law passed by a cantonal legislative body or by the Federal Assembly shall be submitted to the voters. In certain cantons the Referendum is obligatory and every law is thus submitted to the people. In practice the Referendum has acted as a check to advanced legislation.
The Swiss have reason to fear the designs of Prussia. As late as 1856, Prussia and Switzerland were on the edge of war. Prior to 1815 Neuchâtel acknowledged the King of Prussia as its overlord; the Congress of Vienna, however, included this territory in the Swiss Confederation as one of the Swiss Cantons. But Prussia, in spite of this formal arrangement, with its usual disregard of treaties, continued to claim Neuchâtel.
In 1848 the revolutionary influence resulted in more democratic rule in Neuchâtel but the Prussian propagandist of that day was at work and, in 1856, Count Pourtales' plot was discovered and several hundred prisoners seized by the Swiss government. All but a score were released. Frederick William IV of Prussia demanded their instant pardon and release and ordered the mobilisation of his army but, finally, through the intervention of Napoleon III, the affair was settled, the prisoners released by way of France, and the Prussian King renounced all rights over Neuchâtel.
The Kulturkampf of Bismarck, his contest against the Roman Catholics, had its echoes in Switzerland and it probably was due also to German influence that until 1866 full freedom was withheld from the Jews.
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.
Von Below, a German officer in Berlin who had been in the Argentine, used to make merry over the Argentine soldiers and said that they objected to drilling when it rained. I do not believe this officer, but I should like to have the brave Argentine officers hear his jokes and gibes.
We left, after three or four days in Berne, on the evening train, for the French frontier. In the train corridors, outside the compartments, spies stood staring at us, spies pretending to read newspapers came into each compartment; police spies, betrayed by heavy boots; general staff spies, betrayed by a military stiffness; women spies; spies assorted and special. And these gentry had followed me all over Berne--for in the neutral countries of Europe as well as the belligerents are we constantly reminded of the insidious methods of Kaiserism.
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