The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1917. SWITZERLAND MENACED.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 23 January 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1917. SWITZERLAND MENACED.

(With which is incorporated The Taihape Post and Waimarino News).

Early last year, a Swiss professor, in a lecture to the Students’ Society of the University of Zurich, emphasised the fact that Switzerland was experiencing- the effects of the European struggle in almost everything but loss Of men. Now it seems that Switzerland —picturesque Switzerland the Mecca Uf mountain climbers, that tiny country, whose only misfortune is that it happens to be neighbouring on the groat barbaric empire of the Kaiser, is to become the next scene of bloody invasion by Germany. International law is dead; there is now no law that is supported by nations other than those at present opposed to Germany. by which small States have any right to existence. The Kaiser has set his machine of might against all right, andi f he says the word Switzerland will be devastated whether Germany succeeds or fails in final victory. The life and property of the peaceable Swiss people will be left at the mercy of the Hun looter, only for the opposition her people can give, with whatever assistance the Allies can spare Their land will be bathed in blood; their food and valuables will be torn from them; sacrilege and all that is dishonourable will flood their homes; their young people will be enslaved, and their condition will be reduced to that of Belgium Why, if there is any internationally supported law, is the robber, murderer and wanton destnu er to do his deadly work? Are those nations, called great, who are not yet [ involved in the great struggle for na- | tional liberty not concerned for llv. principle of national safety? It is doubt, ful whether any other country has so scrupulously observed the rules of neutrality, and yet because Germany wants food nothing in Switzerland is safe. The highway robber among nations is gathering his forces on her frontiers, and the trite saying that a neutral can only look on and suffer is to be changed by having the words “if Germany wills it” added thereto. It is said that this great Hun concentration is not to assail Switzerland; that it is to attack Italy, but the first important consideration is that Germany must have food. Her people are starving now and food must he got at the earliest possible moment to avoid revolution. Is it not tolerably certain that their armies will go where food is plentiful and seems to be easily obtainable? It would be a long way to storehouses via, say, the Trentino. Italy has taken precautions to render er position practically impregnable in

i that quarter since the Austrian effort at invasion. Anything in the way of supplies Germany might get in that direction would be at too great a price in time and life. Food and war supplies are what Germany stands in desperate need of, and it is reasonable to assume that a move will be made in the direction from whence they are most easily and quickly obtainable. Moreover, she is well aware that the Allies are contemplating an attack somewhere on the West, which is intended to be pressed to decisive victory, and their concentration in huge force on the Swiss border may be a disconcerting move; an effort to make the Allies divide their forces, to weaken their strategy by casting in a subject for contention just at the last moment. For what is really to happen we must wait, but the getting of food and the conquering of some small, semi-helpless State to induce the German people to put up with a little more starvation seems to be the determining factors in anything their armies may be set to accomplish. Four hundred thousand Germans are concentrated on the Swiss frontier, where they cannot be challenged by the Allies. To get near them our troops would be compelled to traverse Switzerland and so violate her neutrality. Germany has time to devastate half Switzerland before Allied help is available, and to indulge her robbing and murdering propensities, while the Allies are rushing forward assistance to enable Switzerland’s two hundred and fifty thousand strong army to withstand the four hundred thousand German robbers. At present it looks as though Switzerland is to be sacrificed. What are other neutrals doing? It may be Spain and Portugal next, followed by Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The indifference of neutral countries under such circumstances is amazing.