Never in the history of the peasant have such large profits been made as during the last four years. The hotel industry has no doubt been crippled, but it has been kept alive by the not inconsiderable influx of wealthy refugees from Central Europe and neutral countries, and the hospitalization of some 30,000 French, British, Belgian, and German Interned prisoners of war. The watch and clock, automobile, electric, and other mechanical industries, have made good by devoting their attention to the manufacture of munitions or other war requisites, in which the exceptional skill of the Swiss artisan has proved of inestimable worth. The dye industry has been developed to such an extent, that Switzerland may confidently expect to retain a portion of this trade in competition with Germany in the future. The war will, I would fain believe and hope, have given to Swiss economics an elasticity and adaptability of which they stood in need, and from many points of view will not have proved that unmixed evil foreseen by her pessimists under the influence of their first fears. German industrial circles have watched this development with misgivings, and are busily taking precautionary measures to turn it to their advantage by the loan of capital, by the infiltration of expert management into all those concerns in which they foresee rivalry, and often by the purchase outright of commercial undertakings likely to be useful in supplementing the work of the Fatherland in the economic struggle it will have to face after the war.