“The old Republic of Switzerland was of course the model, as it consented to become the nucleus, of this vast political experiment. Here were people of three different races—French, German, and Italian—people who not only differed, but had in time past differed even to blood, in their religious outlook, living together in perfect harmony and unparalleled prosperity. The Swiss character is not naturally pacific; on the contrary, in the late Middle Ages the Swiss were the most venal and the most savage mercenaries to be obtained in Europe: yet the little Republic not only kept itself clear, poorly armed as it was, from the turmoil of the Great War,[1] but laboured, not unsuccessfully, to draw the combatants together and to invite exchanges of opinion. Further, its prosperity seemed in no way diminished by the fact that it had no seaboard and depended upon the good-will of its more powerful neighbours for the whole maintenance of its import and export trade. What could be the secret of this phenomenon on the political horizon, this living disproof of all our most cherished theories as to the conditions which guarantee the unity and the well-being of a nation? “The answer to this enigma was already known in Ludgate Circus. The Swiss prospered as they did because they were a nation of hotel-keepers. Hotel-keepers, by the very nature of their profession, are bound to keep the peace as far as possible not only with but among their neighbours. They are bound to avoid even the threat or the appearance of strikes and disturbances in their own country, for fear of awaking panic in the hearts of those maiden ladies who are their chief patronesses. Hotel-keepers are not troubled by any petty differences of religion or nationality, so long as they are united in a common endeavour to make money out of the foreigner. Hotel-keepers, finally, do not trouble about a seaboard—any sort of board is good enough for them. It followed that there was only one remedy to apply to the distracted politics of Middle Europe. A larger Switzerland must be formed, which should contain as many as possible of the important tourists’ resorts, and must be organized on the Swiss model, to constitute a solid block of pacific influence, bound together by an indissoluble bond of common commercial interest, which should extend from the South of the Rhineland to the very gates of Galicia.