THE TRANSITION PERIOD.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16520, 12 May 1919, Page 8

THE TRANSITION PERIOD.

TRYrNG TIMES OS THE

CONTINENT OF EUROPE

(SPECIALLY ■WRITTEN TOR "THE PRESS.'')

(Bv Mrs Julian Graxde.)

BERXE, March 7

It is difficult to know what life in Great Britain or the United States is liks during the present transition period, but on the Continent it is distinctly not a pleasant period. Many people thought that so soon as actual hostilities ceased, life would become not merely easier but also much pleasant-er, more normal, and more regular. The contrary, however, is the case, which may, of course, be partly due to reaction and partly, also, to the fact that we have just gone thiough a long and) trying period.

During the four and a half years of actual hostilities everyone accepted the inevitable. No one. for instance, expected to be able to travel freely or to use the post and telegraph without restrictions; and everyone endured officialism and red-tapeism very much as wc endure slush after a thaw —as something about which it is useless to grumble. Take, for instance, the post. Now, during the war the post from England to the Continent arrived much more regularly and much more quickly than it has been doing lately; and there was only too good cause for the recent question in the British Parliament concerning the slowness of posts to Switzerland and the inconvenicnce and loss .to British and Swiss merchants arising therefrom. I personally know of large sums of money lost to British trade owing to the slowness and unciependableness of the postal communications of late between London and Switzerland, for which, of course, London blames Paris and Paris blames London. The Postmaster-General, in. his reply in Parliament, attributes the deiays to the slowness of the train services and to the censorship. But a passenger from London can reach Berne in forty-eight hours, and yet a letter seldom takes less than seven days, and sometimes tenj while ordinary plaini language telegrams are held up for five days. A shrewd Scotchman with whom I was discussing this state of affairs remarked: "It's all the result of this war machinery which was created, and all the officials employed in connexion with it. They stick to their posts like leeches, because they do not want the trouble of looking for others, and some of theni probably know that in open competition they would have a had time. So, although a good many censorship officials have been discharged, a good many others are kept on, not because censorship is now really necessary, but in order to give them employment. Since the armistice, more letters have been sent, and there are, of course, fewer people to censor them. This is one reason for all the delay, and the chief reason of all."

Apparently the demoralising effect of the transition period upon the post is not confined to England or France. It is singular that, whereas throughout the war German newspapers arrived in Switzerland with unfailing regularity, since the armistice they Have arrived irregularly or not at all. But then in Germany revolution prevails, which accounts for much.

Again, to quote this Scotch merchant, who contrived to reach Switzerland the other day, travelling now from London to the Continent seems nearly as inconvenient and almost as little of a pleasure as it was in 1763, when Tobias Smollett took his famous journey from London to Boulogne via Dover. Paris seems to have become, so far as prices are concerned, a 'pirate city, no figure being apparently too high to ask for a hed; while as for food, it is diffiuclt to see how any person of moderate means can get enough to eat. The Paris authorities appear to bo so busy arranging for receptions of statesmen that they have no time to regulate food supplies or food prices. Those who, like myself, were at The Hague during the disarmament conference of 1899 and 1907, will remember that, much smaller as is the Dutch capital, matters there never reached anything approaching such a jjass. All this muddle during the transition ' period aids and abets Bolshevism, which is a far more serious danger everywhere on the Continent than many people even now seem to realise. Switzerland herself does not greatly fear Bolshev- j ism among her own people, but what she does dread is tho results of Bolshevism f—-n without, there being always wa' <* at her frontier numbers of Germans, .aiiong them many Bolshevist agents, watching for the first opportunity to cross into Swiss territory. In Zurich alone, not a very largo town, there arp known to be fully 4000 refractories and deserters at present, mostly Germans; and so great is the desire of those individuals to get into Switzerland that the Swiss authorities have actually been obliged to mobilise a certain number of soldiers as frontier guards to keep incessant watch along the German-Swiss frontier.

For a country largely dependent on tourists, as is Switzerland, such a state of things is naturally very serious. After four and a half years of bad seasons, with "virtually no tourist traffic at all, tlie Swiss hotelkeepers have, of course, been reduced to something like despair, and are eagerly counting on a return of normal conditions generally, particularly normal travel conditions; yet, owing to the danger to which Switzerland is exposed of being flooded with unemployed and undesirables, Germans principally, but also Austrians, Hungarians, Russians, and Balkan subjects, it is impossible for the Swiss authorities to allow free access to their country. To return to the matter of international communications during the transition period, it is extraordinary that even American mails come much less quickly and regularly now than during the war. when tbcre were dangers from submarines and mines. Connected with this question is that of supplies, and during the war the food supply of Switzerland was in some respects better than it is at nresent. Owing, it is said, to so many Swiss cattle having been sent to Germany, who insisted upon getting them during the war in exchango for her unwillingly supplied coal, Switzerland is forced to introduce two meatless days a week from now. As for butter, the allowance this month per head is only 50 grammes (less than 2oz) —which is practically nothing; and milk is still scarco. - Never hnvo the Swiss been so badly off for fuel as this winter, but this fuel scarcity, of course, afflicts tho, whole Continent. To such a pitch have the Swiss State railways been rcduced . that not only do they run no Sunday; trains and no express trains, and only one or two trains a day in each dire?- i tion on week days, but many engines arc heated by wood now. Of late, in-: deed, not a quarter of the coal neees- | sary for the country lias been arriving, j It wonld seem that what tho Peace Conference in Paris ought first to do is! to ensure a sufficiency of food and fuel for the present generation, and afterwards redraw the map of Europe. Nothing would deal a harder blow to Bolshevism than to settle the food and fuel question, and to enable merchants to procure raw materials, open their factories, and give employment to their work-people. I fear that on the Continent people have had their fill, and more of statesmen's speeches and presidential platitudes. What is wanted above all, as I cannot too strongly insist, to tide the world ores this transition period, is

food, fuel, and work; ari&, I would add, common sense, consideration, and sympathy in dealing with labour. As for labour unrest, let no one imagine that it is confined to belligerent countries with largo armies to demobilise; it is plainly'manil'est in neutral lands, where, however, it is still more in the stage of murmuring and smouldering discontent than in that of active revolt against the conditions of daily life. But if it should long continuo to *be so difficult for the mass of people to make both ends meet and to satisfy even the most modest requirements, then the labour unrest, disturbance, and revolt is likely to prevail to an alarming extent in neutral as well as in belligerent countries. Some sensation-loving newspapers might here assert that I am merely trying to make everyone's flesh creep. I am doing nothing of the sort; I am simply stating—not overstating— facts plain to all who live in the heart of Europe, unmistakable signs of the times which it would be folly not to perceive.