THE SWISS.

IN the current number of the Cornhill Magazine there is an unmeasured attack on the latter-day Swiss, and the author of it, Miss Edith Sellers, seeks to recommend her intemperance by the plea that she acts as an advocatus diaboli in an ecclesiastical council. She would not wish the verdict on the proposal to canonise the Swiss to be given on mere half-grounds, and therefore she draws a picture of which "the shadows are designedly unrelieved." "The case for canonisa- tion stands elsewhere." We should like to know where it does stand, for the author has left little ground for it, having attributed to the Swiss practically all the cardinal defects of man. No, if the article is true at all, it is true in its obvious sense, and not in any forensic sense which has the appearance of having been adopted as an alleviating afterthought. But we are sure that it is not true. The author had her attention directed to the faults of the Swiss in the first place by a cosmopolitan informant, who " had spent many years in Switzerland," but professed that he "could not judge" whether the Swiss were well educated. He could judge them apparently on most other points, and his conclusion was that they were "the most intolerable people in Europe, the most conceited and narrow-minded, the most grasping and egoistic." Miss Sellers disputed this; but after staying • Kr. Lowe in his article in the Contemporary mentions this conversation, but only gives a summary of it, which, possibly owing to compression, is entirely misleading, some time in Switzerland she wrote the article to which we refer.

Before we come to the counts in the indictment we would put in a general caution against the extraordinary dangers of misjudging a whole people which beset those Englishmen who live abroad. Most national characteristics are in a good sense prejudices, and it is extremely difficult for any man to

adapt his own prejudices to those of other countries. We venture to say that hardly one Englishman living in France is perfectly just to the French, or one in Germany perfectly just to the Germans nor is there one Frenchman living in England who is perfectly just to Englishmen. Differences of standpoint in ethics, manners, and so forth are regarded as vices. Yet they are and remain only differences. Miss Sellers's informant quoted the lines :—

"On ne voit Bernois poll, Ni Vaudois sobre,

Ni Moja probe; Du Zuricois la chastete, Du Thurprien l'honnetete, En Helvetie est raretC."

One wonders if anything is more untrue than this kind of negative proverb. It has the same value of wit and cynical truth, and yet the same grossly misleading quality, as the saying that "members of the Church of England drink and swear, and Nonconformists lie and thieve." It is curious that several of the faults which Miss Sellers finds in the Swiss are not peculiar to them at all, but are to be found in many parts of Europe. She blames a Committee of Swiss women because

they adopted a narrow-minded, and even cruel, standard in deciding which babies should enjoy a distribution of free milk.

But is the exclusion of illegitimate babies (when for all we know there was not enough milk to go round, and the mothers rather than their babies were the objects of exclusion) worse than, say, the refusal of Christian rites for bigoted reasons which is a too well-known phenomenon in England ? Again, is the extraordinary exclusiveness of Swiss "society " different from that of the St. Germain quarter in Paris ? Even in the tabooing of politics the analogy is exact. The French remnant of the old regime waits in scornful and arid petulance for the restoration of a King who will never come. In America and in our own Colonies the divorce between politics and the "well-bred" classes is just as noticeable. As to the charge that Swiss Courts of Law are grossly partial, and that "no

foreigner ever wins in a suit against a native "—this extra- ordinarily grave charge is only repeated by Miss Sellers ; it was made by a Consul in Switzerland—we should like to have evidence in its support. We admit that we have had no

experience whatever of the Swiss law, but we hold that unless such a charge can be supported most fully it ought not to be published.

In another passage the author creates prejudice without producing any serious evidence. Let us quote:— "There are in force in Switzerland certain laws which, in the hands of the unscrupulous, may work great havoc with personal rights and liberties. This is a point concerning which there can be no dispute. For ;instance, in most cantons men and women may be punished not only for what they have actually done in the past, but also for what may possibly result in the future from what they have done. Suppose a man is spending week by week all that he earns. Then the local authorities, acting in con- junction with the local police, may send him to a penal workhouse, on the pretext that his conduct is such that he may later become destitute, and therefore a burden on the community. To be a burden on the community is a crime. The result is, a woman who wishes to be rid of her husband for a year or two—or a man of his wife—has only to persuade the local authorities that, unless he be forced to change his ways, he may perhaps some day become destitute. I myself found in one penal workhouse a woman who was there for two years at the request of her husband."

Would that there were some shadow of a tendency in England to regard becoming a burden on the community as a crime! If the laws of Switzerland are tyrannously and maliciously misused for the purpose of private quarrels, we should like to know the facts. But so long as facts are withheld most people will prefer to judge by what leaps to the eye in Switzerland. Is it not the most patent and splendid fact that one can see there a whole nation living in self-respecting and most creditable independence ? Take the valley of the Engadin?, for instance. You cannot discover a pauper, and

yet the soil scarcely yields a livelihood. The Swiss peasant does not cry out on fate like an Irish peasant in Connemara ; he puts up with even worse conditions, and cultivates his stony, sterile little slope like a man. If he fails, he quietly leaves his country, or at all events his district, and accepts a new way of life elsewhere ; but some day he will return to the valley he loves, and with the help of the capital he has saved live and labour in enough comfort for the rest of his life. Is it not an inspiring practice P Is it not wrong-headed and cruel to employ the finest characteristics of the Swiss people as part of the argument against them P

Miss Sellers goes on to describe the ignorance and dis- honesty of the Swiss. No amount of particular examples —which can be collected with the greatest ease in any country in the world—can refute certain broad facts on the credit side which are obvious to every traveller in Switzer- land. In tiny villages the resources of science are often drawn upon in a measure which we believe is unmatched in the world ; the running water from the mountain is employed to create power and supply electricity ; telephones were used throughout the land for years before the ordinary London householder had dreamed of having such an instrument installed in his house. Enlightenment is the very atmosphere of the country. Consider the Swiss military system. This glorified militia, which is at once efficient and extraordinarily cheap, is one of the wonders of the world. The Swiss have not imitated any one ; they invented it. A Swiss General, who is, say, an hotel-keeper at Lucerne, Basle, Berne, or Genoa, carries military problems into his private life and ponders them. Service to his country is his bobby. Nor is this thoughtful patriotism confined to the higher classes. One of the most significant political facts of recent times was that when the Swiss people were asked by means of a Referendum whether they wished for a more exacting and more costly military service they said " Yes." They voluntarily laid upon themselves more labour and more taxes. The result of a Referendum is commonly negative. If ever one would have expected the result to be a loud negation, it was then. The decision shows a moral bravery right through the nation of which the Swiss may well be proud. Of physical bravery any mountaineer who has climbed with a Swiss guide will speak, and will say whether he would rather find himself in a " tight place" with a Swiss guide or with one of any other nationality. The Swiss has a dignity which is of the highest kind because he has confidence in himself. He does not say that because he is a Republican and a democrat he is humiliated or made ridiculous by serving other men. He serves all Europe, providing a playground and hotels ; yet we have never been able to discover in him any servility.

We regret extremely that the Swiss people should have been libelled so outrageously by an English writer, but we can assure them that she speaks only for herself and a few carping critics. For the majority of English people Switzerland, with its " woods, waters, wastes," and " the untrampled deserts where the snows are," is the land of heart's desire. Thousands of English hearts beat faster at the thought of the people who have made their mountains what we have made our encircling seas,—the vantage-ground of freedom. Who has not been thrilled by the noble passage in "Anne of Geierstein " when the Swiss girl leaps on the ledge of the precipice to succour the English traveller, or when the stripling Englishman bends the bow that none else of the company gathered in the ruined castle's court can master P Who, too, has not been moved with Wordsworth to hear "the voice of the Helvetian Maid " ?— " Her beauty dazzles the thick wood;

Her courage animates the flood;

Her steps the elastic green-sward meets Returning unreluctant sweets; The mountains (as ye heard) rejoice Aloud, saluted by her voice!

Blithe Paragon of Alpine grace,

Be as thou art—for through thy veins

The blood of Heroes runs its race !

And nobly wilt thou brook the chains That, for the virtuous, Life prepares ; The fetters which the Matron wears; The patriot Mother's weight of anxious cares !"

When on some high Alpine lawn, rock-embowered, and with the gentians " star-scattered on the grass," the thought of such lines comes to the Englishman, he may truly say "Two souls shall flow together, the English and the Swiss,—the souls of the mountains and the seas, of the gleaming glacier and the mist-enshrouded fields of ocean."