SWISS FEARS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 July 1938, Page 9

SWISS FEARS

MENACE FROM GERMANY. The gravity with which Switzerland regards the European Situation is graphically indicated in a letter received in Auckland from a Swiss manufacturer. Written as recently as June 1, the letter was sent by air mail, and it tells of the swiftness which which the inland nation can garrison its frontiers. “Only last week we had in Switzerland drills for frontier protection, the peculiarity of which is that with one or two hours the whole frontier can be protected by men from 20 years of age who live near by,” the letter states. “This is an new organisation, in addition to our regular army, which mobilises men from 20 to 48 years as being the maximum of defence that a country as small as ours can offer to aggressors as powerful as those that surround us. “These past days the danger comes especially from the conflict existing between Germany and Czechoslovakia, and the general opinion is that before long all Germany-speaking parts of this country will be annexed by Hitler with as little ceremony as he has annexed Austria.” That very morning, the writer added, he had heard that an important firm in Prague had suspended all its orders. Most of the manufacturers in his own industry had taken the step themselves of not executing the orders they had on hand for Czechoslovakia. They feared a repetition of the experience they had had in the case of Austria, where the wholesalers, in spite of their desire to pay for goods supplied before the annexation, had been forbidden by the German Government to effect payments. As a result, hundreds of thousands of francs were “opn” in the books of Swiss manufacturers.