Though the Swiss recruit has a very short training, he is quite effective as a soldier. As a schoolboy he has a proper physical training, and when he leaves school he generally joins a rifle club. At twenty he is liable to military service, which for every Swiss lasts a period of twenty-five years. During the first year he is called out for recruits' service, which in the infantry lasts forty-five days, in the cavalry eighty days, and in the field artillery fifty-five days. On completing his first year he joins the Élite, or active army, and remains in it for twelve years. On leaving the Élite men pass to the Landwehr, in which they remain until their twenty-fifth year of service. A third line of troops for home defence is furnished by the Landsturm, which is composed of all able-bodied citizens between the ages of seventeen and fifty who are not embodied in the Élite or Landwehr. The Federal Army thus constructed may be said in round numbers to consist of:--Élite, 135,000; Landwehr, 82,000; and Landsturm, 63,000; total, 280,000--an astonishing figure if one considers the total population of Switzerland and how cheaply this army is obtained. * * * Before the beginning of this war one must admit there was a sort of ill-feeling in the Swiss Confederation against France. To protect her national industries the Republic used to be very strict on the subject of imports from Switzerland, and the custom tariffs for exportation of goods to France used to be much higher than those upon exports into Germany or Italy. Since the war broke out everything has changed; the example of Belgium and of what happened to that unfortunate nation, for the sole reason that she was "in the way of the Germans," has made Switzerland think how analogous is her own situation with the situation of Belgium. The so-called "verbal treaty" existing with Germany stood little chance of being respected after the way in which the regular treaty with Belgium had been violated. At the very beginning of the campaign there was great fear of France trying to pass through Switzerland, fear increased artificially by the Swiss Press, which has always been frankly in favour of Germany. But now the Swiss population begins to realise how things are really going, and their attitude is really and strictly neutral. It appears that the respect and ingratiating attitude towards Germany shown by Switzerland at the beginning of the war was the usual behaviour of the small weak boy towards the school bully. Moreover, there was some excuse for this. It is very difficult to obtain any papers other than German in Switzerland, and all the calumnies printed in them were taken by the Swiss population for gospel truth. Now some of the Berne papers begin to show a little more independence, and print side by side the different official _communiqués_ of the various nations.