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SWITZERLAND: Crime of Enlistment

2 minute read
TIME

First act last week of Switzerland’s newly-elected President Giuseppe Motta (born near the Italian frontier, three times previously elected president—1915, 1920 & 1927) was to draw attention to a little-noticed clause in the new Swiss Military Penal Code making it a crime for Swiss to enlist without the Government’s authorization under a foreign flag. As late as the 18th Century Spain, France and the Pope hired Swiss mercenaries. Pope Pius XI still has a Swiss Guard.† Whether they, in serving under the Papal flag, are now criminals under Swiss law did not appear last week. Most Swiss seemed to think that what President Motta had in mind was an effort to check the enlistment of financially depressed Swiss in the French Foreign Legion.

†Every candidate for the [Pope’s Swiss] Guards,” says the Catholic Encyclopedia, “must be a native Swiss, a Catholic, of legitimate birth, unmarried, under 25 years of age, at least 5 ft. 8 in. in height, healthy, and free from bodily disfigurements. Whoever is not eligible for military service in Switzerland, is likewise re fused admission into the Guards. . . . The duties of the Guards are as follows: They are respon sible for the guarding of the sacred person of the Pope and the protection of the Apostolic Palaces, all exits from the palace to the city and the entrance doors to the papal apartments being entrusted to their charge. . . . The religious privileges of the guards are very extensive. . . . The Swiss Guards are fully armed, and have to submit to a strict course of exercises and gymnastics. Football is zealously cultivated by them in the Cortile del Belvedere, and their trumpet corps is splendidly organized.”

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