It is a matter of common knowledge that sympathies in Switzerland were divided at the outbreak of hostilities, the French and Italian speaking cantons having a decided bias in favour of the Allies, and the German cantons one in favour of the other side. After the early successes of the Germans, the opinion was generally held that Germany would press the war to a conclusion so rapidly, that England would not be able to make her weight felt in time to avert a calamity. Swiss military circles, however, did not wholly share this view, as the following account of a conversation, which in August, 1914, I had with a well-known Swiss officer of standing shows. This conversation appeared to me at the time all the more interesting as my informant was a Professor of Military History, and, judging by his name, might have been expected to have his views coloured by German sympathies. He spoke in the following sense:— "Now that England has thrown in her lot with France and Russia, the combination will probably be too great for Germany and her Allies, but the struggle will be a bitter one. Remember the Seven Years' War, and what Prussia was capable of in opposition to a host of enemies. You will have many surprises; Switzerland, however, will welcome the weakening of Germany, provided she is not completely crushed. A weakening of Germany would be useful to us Swiss, for we see a great danger to ourselves in the economic dominance she is obtaining in our country. Any relaxation in that respect will be to our advantage." The events of the last four years have done much to change feeling in the German-speaking cantons, inasmuch as the invasion of Belgium, the employment of poison gas, the sinking of the _Lusitania_, the brutality of the submarine campaign, the destruction of Serbia, the harshness shown to Roumania, have made an unfavourable impression on all classes of the population. German propaganda has also thoroughly awakened the country to the danger it was incurring from the stranglehold which German financiers and industrials were establishing upon her economic life. The revolutionary fiasco in Russia also, in no small degree, affected public opinion. As a republican nation possessed with the ideal of the rights of smaller nations to dispose of themselves, they feared and abhorred the Russian form of government as represented by Czarism; and this, no doubt, had a good deal to do with the way in which they regarded Germany as a protector and a bulwark against the submergence of Europe by a Slav wave. That danger now removed, they probably feel Germany's support may be more easily dispensed with; and with a weakened Germany they foresee the possibility of re-organizing their economic life free from the trammels of an overbearing neighbour. The crushing of Germany, however, would, they think, mean economic ruin to them; and at this they draw the line. [1] From _L'Armée Suisse_, by Colonel C. H. Egli, Colonel d'Etat-Major Général, 1913. CHAPTER III