THROUGH SWISS EYES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 29 November 1938, Page 6

THROUGH SWISS EYES

THE RECENT CZECH AFFAIR . iliv Air Mail—Own Correspondent] LONDON, 10th November. An officer of the Swiss Army has given me his personal impressions of the recent Czech affair. This soldier, who in his utterly professional matter-of-fact outlook is almost a living replica of Mr Shaw’s Captain Bluntschli m “Arms and The Man,” is Major in an anti-tank battalion, and was called up during the European crisis. He and his battalion held a position on the German-Swiss frontier, with machineguns. anti-tank guns, and a special camouflaged cable-netting equipment in which the Swiss Army specialises. In fact they are applying to the modern tank very much the same defence that the Ancient Roman retiarius used in the gladitorial arena against the attacking swordsman. Their object is if possible not only to disable but to capture the tanks. Such methods would not be available in open country, but are extremely effective in a ciuuntry like Switzerland where tank approach must be confined to certain mountain passes. My Swiss friend says everybody in his country ‘i‘n the know” was amazed when the Munich talks started. LONG ODDS The Swiss conviction was that Hitler, on the strength of assurances by von Ribbentrop and certain English notabilities that England would not fight over Czechoslovakia, was trying a gigantic bluff. When the news reached Berlin that the British Fleet was mobilised there was consternation. The Swiss military experts regarded France and Britain, backed by the efficient Czech army and other Balkan States as overwhelmingly stronger than Germany at the moment. Moreover it is realised in Switzerland that there is a very powerful element in Germany, and a growing one, which is intensely hostile to the Nazi regime. This element would, declared the Swiss officer, make itself felt in any real crisis. As to Russia he was not very optimistic from the military point of view. He served under Marshal Blucher in the fighting after the war, and has no great opinion of him otherwise than as a brave man. The trouble with the Russian Army, he said, is that all its officers are appointed on political grounds and not on military merit