SWITZERLAND: Blacked Out

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One night last week dozens of British warplanes droned over Switzerland on their way to bomb northern Italy. Antiaircraft batteries opened fire and the Swiss High Command claimed to have dispersed one squadron. Next day the Government made a second energetic, but futile, protest to London. The High Command took more effective action, ordered the entire country blacked out from 10 o'clock every night until dawn. The Swiss explained that instead of compelling respect for their neutrality, normal lighting had guided pilots on their way.

Last week Italy waked up to the fact that although Italians could not learn from their own papers how badly things were going in Greece, they could read all about it in papers from Switzerland. Several Swiss newspapers, including the Tribune de Geneve, were banned. Fascist Mouthpiece Virginio Gayda issued a stern warning to the Swiss press to stop printing what he called "unneutral" war news. The rest of the Italian press immediately took up the cry in shriller tones. Cried Popolo di Brescia:

"We will place the name of Switzerland, which for months has allowed air violations by enemy aircraft, side by side with that of our detested enemy. The fate of Greece and Turkey already is sealed, and so is the fate of the little mercantile, intellectually dull, anti-Italian and anti-German Swiss."

That was all very well, but before invading Switzerland the Axis will think four times. One thought will be for the tough little Swiss Army, one for the perpendicular Swiss terrain. Two thoughts will be for the St. Gotthard and Simplon tunnels, which the Swiss could blow up and thereby close two of Italy's five life lines for German coal and other things. Dynamite, not diplomacy, has kept Switzerland an island of comparative freedom in the heart of Hitler's Europe.