t 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