" 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.
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