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