IMPOVERISHED SWITZERLAND.
[To THE EDITOR 07 ens "SFEDTATOR."J
Sia,—It is a pleasure to know that Mr. H. Stuart Thompson agrees with your opinion (which so correctly expressed the intention of my letter) that "the individual action of friend to friend" la at this moment required in not a few Alpine villages. But it is to be feared that the general effect of Mr. Thompaon's letter will be to chill any impulse to generosity which that agreement might' otherwise have stimulated. It is a fact that Zurich, Bide, Geneva, and Berne, too, for that matter, are the homes of some wealthy men; and, as far as it goes, it is satisfactory to read that "some years ago" a certain Swiss village had no poor. But all this is irrelevant to a plea on behalf of men, women, and children living at this present hour in remote villages, which are suffering in consequence of the entirely abnormal con- ditions caused by the war. My letter was not a "statement about the supposed poverty of Switzerland," but one about the undoubted poverty of some Swiss; and it was written in the hope, which I still entertain, that those who know them at first band will be ready to help them in the present eircum-
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