tains.

by Bob Hunter

terior of Switzerland, the visitor waits with bated camera to get a photo of some moun- Instead, on the three-hour stretch from

"Tiesce or si BY TRAIN through the in-

Zurich to Geneva, except for the chalets, it all looks

like Saskatchewan.

] actually got one picture of a guy driving a tractor, his head sheltered by a Eugene Whelan cowboy hat. He may have been wearing the tradi- tional short-legged prachten costume underneath, but | couldn't tell. The image was strictly who-has-seen-the- wind.

Although the tny, intricate country (in three hours you have crossed most of it length-wise) is 60 per cent Ajpine, its interior, known as the Mitterland, 1s a lush cow- dotted plateau, as rich as the creamiest foil-wrapped chocolate.

The courtyside isn’t merely petite. It is probably the best- manicured, most tastefully- enhanced landscape this side of Japan. Precise? Intimate? Delicate? Well, of course.

In Bern, the capital, I watch a busload of Japanese tourists ready their cameras, video machines and tape recorders to capture the mo- ment when a 13th century glockenspeil does its pioneer R2D2 routine in synch with a vast clock whose hands weigh over a hundred pounds.

The Japanese are all wear- ing Swiss watches. Hm.

\ af

Our guide, Joe Buehler of the Swiss National Tourist Office, a cheerful cigar- smoker whose mission in life is to keep hitting us with plea- sant surprises (like extra orders of schnapps) is rather morose at the moment because the train got out of Zurich a full minute and a half late.

“So much for Swiss effi- ciency,’’ he apologizes. 1 calm him down by telling true tales of Via Rail. That’s one thing you find yourself doing a lot in Switzerland — com- paring its pervasive func- tionality to Canada’s petulant fumble-fingered giantism.

Joe is musing about the military problems presented by the Mitterland region. It is defended by three entire elite army corps, highly mechaniz- ed, extensively practised in flame-throwing, grenade- lobbing and house-to-house combat.

Yet it remains the vulnerable underbelly of what is otherwise quite

possibly an impregnable for- tress. The central factor in everyday Swiss life, Swiss history and modern Swiss

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commercial! and political suc- cess is the theory and practice of armed neutrality.

The ‘‘armed’’ part goes back to pre-Roman times, of course. It took Caesar to con-

quer the original tribes. Afterwards, neither the Franks, Burgundians' nor

Hapsburgs could hold the in- transigent mountaineer peasants down for long.

In 1315, it was the Swiss who first unhorsed the mounted knight, slaughtering 2,000 armoured Austrian aristocrats at Morgarten Pass. By the mid- Renaissance, the Swiss had a well-deserved reputation as the most powerful and feared military force in Europe. Napoleon reckoned Switzerland to have the best troops, bar none.

He should have known. Even outnumbering the Swiss fifteen to one, the French Ar- my had by then suffered numerous defeats at the hands of Swiss foot soldiers armed with 21-foot pikes, eight-foot cudgels with spik- ed heads and_ brass-fisted Lucerne hammers.

Much sought-after Swiss mercenaries worked for just about every faction in Europe at one time or another. The Swiss Guard was chosen to protect the Pope not because of their cute white-cross uniforms — it was their animal ferocity,

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Yet the Swiss have not fought a war fgx nearly 500 years. They hAVe got the theory and practice of armed neutrality down to a science as exact as their watches. Even in the nuclear age it is the ‘‘neutral’’ part and how they achieve it that is really interesting. No passivists these folks, yet they have en- joyed half a millenium of brotherhood, peace and

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