The Flight Into Switzerland

By Ethel Therese Hugli.

[From The New York Times, Jan. 10, 1915.]

BERNE, Nov. 18.—Question: What is Switzerland?

Answer: A small neutral State entirely surrounded by war!

At the first glance such would seem to be the actual state of affairs, for neutral Italy, our southern neighbor, takes up but a small part of our border; to the west we have France, to the north Germany, and to the east Austria, all engaged in deadly combat, all realizing that this time the loser will go down, never to come up again as a power of the first class. The drawback in being so neutral and so near the stage of all these dramatic proceedings, is that we are overwhelmed with "latest dispatches." Our papers bristle with the victories, defeats, denials, assertions, protests, accusations, blame, as contained in the dispatches of the various news agencies.

Reuter is the official English agency. His news is taken with a generous pinch of salt. The German agency is Wolff, whose proud boast it is never to have announced a single German defeat. As a consequence, he is also taken with a large pinch. The French pin their faith to Havas, whose rose-colored dispatches have earned for themselves the name of "Havas-Lies." The Austrians believe in the Wiener agency, whose dispatches are too busy saying: "The reports of Austrian defeats, spread by the enemy, are absolutely untrue," to have time for any real news; while in Italy—"neutral Italy"—the Italian news agency shows such unholy glee over German reverses as to make an impartial person sniff rather suspiciously at its "neutrality." The Wesbuick agency in Russia, severely censored from Petrograd, gives a dry, business-like view of the White Bear's progress in the east. And so it goes.

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.

And now come the Belgian refugees to us, a most pitiable band. French Switzerland has the honor of beginning the movement which has made possible the bringing to Switzerland and placing in hundreds of households these innocent victims of this hideous war. In addition, subscriptions have been opened in various papers, and thousands of francs have been gathered and sent to this most unfortunate of nations. The movement to receive Belgian refugees is gaining ground, too, in German-speaking Switzerland, though here the sympathy for Germany stands somewhat in the way of a full and open hospitality. Some papers write:

"Let the Belgians stay in their country. The Germans will take care of them. Let those that have fled return to their hearths and take up their daily vocations. In this way the misery of the country—which is certainly not entirely the fault of Germany (a hit at England)—will be alleviated. Furthermore, Switzerland's harboring of Belgian refugees is a demonstration against Germany. Let Switzerland beware of doing anything to prejudice her neutrality. Finally, there are in our own country plenty of miserable poor people to exercise our charity upon, and every one knows that charity begins at home."

Articles have appeared in the German papers expressing surprise at Switzerland's hospitality, and to all of these carpers, at home and abroad, these people who have acted out of the purest motives of charity and love for their neighbor, answer somewhat as follows:

The Belgians that have come to take refuge in Switzerland wished nothing better than to stay in their own land. They were driven out in hordes, at the point of the sword, by the Germans. It would be hard to convince them that they ought to go back and that the Germans will take care of them. Some of these miserable beings did return, hoping to pick up their life again after the great shock. They found their village a heap of stones, their business ruined. How could they, therefore, "return to their hearths and take up their daily vocations"? If Switzerland's charitable impulse is to be construed as a demonstration against Germany, then must Switzerland reflect that any excuse will do, and that her neutrality has the same validity in Germany's eyes as had Belgium's. No country, thinking and acting objectively, could find in this movement anything to "prejudice Switzerland's neutrality."

As for charity beginning at home, one might add that it does not end there. It would be hard to find a country whose charitable organizations are so all-embracing as here. In times of peace there are committees who sew for and otherwise look after every kind of human misery. There are the tuberculous poor, the girl-mothers, the creches, the new-born babies, the soup kitchens, the visiting trained nurses, the clinics, the blind, the vicious, the vacation colonies, the swimming lessons, the gymnastics, the tramps and their woodyard, &c., and every organization has its Christmas tree, with distribution of presents when the season of rejoicing comes around. Now that the war is here, and every available man is standing at the frontier guarding his Fatherland from invasion, the soldiers have been added to the list of charities, and none of the old has been stricken off.

In addition to babies' socks, every one has time to knit a pair of soldiers' socks, and in every dainty work basket, lying next to neglected fancy work, there are sure to be some half-finished warm woolen gloves or wristlets or knee warmers for the boys at the frontier. If Switzerland can keep up her home charities and look out so splendidly for her soldiers at the same time, and still have the means and the will to welcome and care for the poor and unhappy of a sister folk whose fate might very well have been her own, it is surely not a subject for adverse criticism, but, on the contrary, for encouragement. And who was it who said: "For as much as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto Me"?