Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 275, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1917 — Switzerland In War Time [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Switzerland In War Time

THERBrare villages, even within the radius of the London searchlights, where the remark Is not uncommonly heard: “One almost forgets the war down here, it’s difficult to believe there is a war!” — the speaker usually some tired worker snatching a few days’ rest, but prevented by limits of time and money from a longer journey, writes Algernon Blackwood in Country Life. Sometimes, however, the observation varies. This morning, for instance, an overworked woman, seeking a few days’ change and rest, but a woman still sensitive enough to dream of happier days in the careless Long Ago, mentioned her yearning for the peace of a beflowered valley of the Alps, where the glacier streams gush downwards from eternal snows, where the wind sighs softly through great pine woods, some quiet valley brimmed with crystal sunlight and lying beneath a dome of -stainless blue. “Just one week.” she sighed, “one little week in sight of the Eiger or the Blumllsalp! To see the stars round the crest of the Matterhorn again and hear the echoes of falling water all night long in the peaceful valleys. The dawns, the sunsets, the tinkling of the cow-bells, the simple, happy peasants, and the children in the fields! If someone first would hypnotize me to forget ... 1” It was a natural longing that thousands feel today. Only the hypnotic forgetfulness would havd to be very thoroughly managed. No Longer a Playground. For Switzerland, an oasis surrounded on all sides by the great belligerents, offers no escape today from sharp reminders that Europe lies soaked in blood. The valleys have lost their hint of other-worldliness, the

mountain hotels their fun and laughter. Winter and summer sports both languish; there are no merry dances, the orchestras.are dumb, and many a resort that in peace time was unpleasantly overcrowded now experiences difficulty In keeping open at all. In every department of her normal life Switzerland has suffered a violent, even a ruinous dislocation; and while the flow of tourist money has practically ceased, the cost of Mobilizing Several divisions and keeping them on a war footing Is a grave item in the national economy that must be met out of diminished revenues. Owing to (he irregular supply, if not sometimes the actual lack, of fuel—the Country’s coal is derived from Germany—more than one industry has been in peril and more than one factory, deprived of the necessary raw material, tjeen shut down. Diminished income, scarcity of labor, of’coal and raw material, combined with heavily Increased expenses, have been among the great — though not, perhaps, the greatest—disabilities this little enclosed country has suffered from the war. Like One Vast Hospital. There are far sharper reminders of the war, however, than these general trade and economic conditions, and the lady who yearned for the peace and seclusion of her favorite haunted mountain valleys would find them at her elbow everywhere. Swiss hospitality has become proverbial; Switzerland has opened her gates to the wounded and disabled; the grands blesses from the prison camps of Germany fill the streets of her towns and crowd the inns and chalets of even remote upland villages. Khaki from every, corner of the 1 British empire, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, kilts from Scotland, Gurkhas from India, the uniforms of Belgium and France

are met In field and forest, on mountain paths, in rowing boats and steamers on the lakes, in shops and churches and cinemas of the towns. In every train and tram in khaki or the pollu blue, in the village case, at the Kursaal concert, half way up some dizzy height, or in ’-the shady ■ nook of some hotel or villa garden, is seen at every hour of the day that symbol of a fighting world —the military salute. The Interiors of Clinique and convalescent home, of doctors' consulting rooms and private nursing quarters, are not, of course, so easily seen, but it needs no imagination to divine that they, too, are full. The crutches, the empty sleeves, the limping legs and shaded eyes are everywhere, and few of their owners, men and officers, but languished two years at least in one of the miserable German prison camps that have stained the name of Germany beyond all cleansing. Yet, equally, there are compensations that no Imaginative .mind can fail to note; there are striking contrasts. The Red Cross flag that first w’aved from a Geneva tower now seems to stream from the summit of Mont Blanc itself, covering the entire land with its gracious and beneficent meaning. And, thanks to its protection, these khaki figures, officers and men, heroes all from Le Cateau, Mons and the rest, take their fill of the sunshine and the mountain wind, enjoying themselves at last, and trying to forget their vile captivity. Strange sights may be seen —is this the Switzerland that we remembered, or some dream with happiness and nightmare oddly mixed? Elderly, bronzed,. officers, beribboned and beclasped, chasing swallowtails with home-made nets and kill-ing-bottles, and with the zest of eager

boyhood!' A first lieutenant, one sleeve empty, casting a rod over a mountain stream for trout, a flying man behind him, limping badly, picking flowers as though he saw them for the first time in*, his life! Three others, with shaded eyes, or possibly with three sound eyes among the party, ellmbing trees for birds’ nests as though home for the summer holidays in Kent or Surrey! Food Scarce, Prices High. Switzerland, Indeed, today Is changed beyond recognition. Prices are high and food is scarce. Rationing runs its difficult course, as elsewhere in our dislocated world. Trains are reduced, and railway, as also amusement, tickets heavily taxed. It is good to know that many of our own men and officers have come home now from Chateau d’Oex, with its’ attendant villages of Rougemont and Rossinieres, from Murren in the Oberland and other places. 1 The majority of these have not seen England for three years at least. Their evacuation will make room for others to come in from Germany, and no one can be more grateful for this than those, whose places in Switzerland will thus . be tilled. There is another aspect of life in Switzerland that is less accessible to ttlie public, as well as less free for the journalist to write about Though the resorts are somewhat deserted, and the villages handed over to interned soldiers chiefly, the towns are crowd- ■ ed, and some of them are booming. Geneva, Berne, Zurich and Lausanne are packed with strange humanity, and rooms not easily to be had. Lucerne is thriving; Lugano very busy. Every nationality is represented, every shade of color 1 . Germans are übiquitous, of course, making themselves at home even in French Switzerland.

View of Lucerne.

Main Street of Murren.