SWITZERLAND: Independence Assailed

Within a stone’s throw of the German border, Swiss newspapers, with stanch impartiality, print news from all nations of the world. Last week they had one story which set them back on their heels.

It came from the U.S., a nation which the Swiss consider their great & good friend. The author was Charles Lanius, ex-NBC radio reporter, back in the U.S. from a year’s stay in Bern. His Saturday Evening Post article, “Switzerland, Axis Captive,” though “softened” by State Department suggestion, still packed enough punch to make the Swiss and their friends hopping mad. Of Switzerland Lanius had written:

> “[It is] a Nazi-occupied country.” (The Swiss paid $1,000,000 a day for full mobilization in the first year and a half of the war, remain partially mobilized today, with reserves ready on an hour’s notice. If invaded, they are ready to destroy their great Alpine railroad tunnels as part of a scorched-earth plan.)

> “The man who really runs Switzerland is lady-killing Baron von Bibera, the German Minister.” (No Minister is Freiherr Sigismund von Bibra—Lanius misspelled his name—but Botschaftsrat, i.e. Counsellor of Embassy; and Switzerland, independent since 1291, is still ruled by its seven-man Federal Council.*)

> “The Swiss are being pressured into giving more and more [food] to Germany.” (Although the Swiss are trading some dairy products for other goods they need, Switzerland imports from Axis or Axis-occupied countries four times as much as she exports.)

> “Electricity [is] diverted into Germany to run German factories.” (Hydroelectric plants on the Swiss border have for years been joint-owned with neighbor countries because they use international waters, such as the Rhine.)

> “Today Switzerland is just one big factory working day and night for the Germans.” (Until France fell the Swiss worked almost exclusively for the Allies, now have to sell to German markets lest the Nazis withhold vital coal supplies. Even so, Switzerland still trades with the U.S., has 14 Swiss ships plying the Atlantic.)

The Swiss had a right to be angry. In World War II Switzerland has taken over the monumental task of representing U.S. interests in every occupied European country and every country with which the U.S. is at war. The International Red Cross in Switzerland provides the only contact for the Allies with their war prisoners in Axis hands. With its own meager rations and funds, Switzerland since 1940 has fed back to life 50,000 starving children of France, Yugoslavia and Greece, is still taking them in for a stay of three to four months each.

* Present term expires Dec. 31, 1943. when the Federal Assembly will elect another Council for a new four-year term.