The war was a period of trial for the Swiss from the economic, political and moral point of view. It was found impossible, not withstanding treaty obligations, to maintain complete economic neutrality. Switzerland was over-populated and over-industrialized in proportion to its resources, and was largely dependent on for eign countries for its supplies of foodstuffs and raw materials. The Allies refused to supply foodstuffs unless Switzerland ceased to trade with Germany, while Germany threatened, if Switzerland did so, to withhold the necessary coal supplies. The situation be came exceedingly critical after Italy came into the war in May 1915, and still more when the United States also entered the field in April 1917. Although in one way the industries of Switzerland made the position of the country more difficult, they nevertheless helped to preserve its existence ; for all the belligerent States were equally interested in keeping the Swiss factories at work. A modus vivendi with Germany was devised in 1915 by the institu tion of the Treuhandstelle at Zurich, and with the Allies by the creation of the S.S.S. (Societe suisse de surveillance economique).
These bodies gave each side a guarantee that the goods which it exported to Switzerland would riot be re-exported, and in this way Switzerland was enabled, however inadequately, to obtain supplies.
Financially the war cost the Confederation dear. The whole or part of the army had to be kept under arms throughout the war, and the total expense of this amounted to 1,220 million francs, or nearly Fr. 40o per head of the population. The Swiss nation was therefore asked in 1915 to vote a Federal war tax—the first direct tax to be levied by the Confederation—and a similar tax was voted again in 1919. By this means Switzerland was able to avoid the
inflation of its currency and the depreciation of the exchange.
From the political point of view, the Confederation endeavoured to practice the most scrupulous neutrality between the belliger ents. Its task was rendered difficult by the fact that public opinion in Switzerland was neither neutral nor united. French-speaking Switzerland was violently anti-German and pro-Ally, and in these districts the Federal Council was severely criticized for not having protested against the violation of Belgian neutrality in 1914. Feeling ran less high in German-speaking Switzerland, but was rather in favour of Germany, to which country Switzerland was bound by a number of economic and cultural interests. This ex plains, though it does not justify, the fact that pro-German sym pathies were manifested, against the will of the Government, in high political and military circles in the Confederation. The affair of the colonels in 1916, when information was supplied by the Staff to foreign military attaches, and the Hoffmann affair in 1917 (an attempt to negotiate peace between Germany and Russia) were not, it is true, actually breaches of neutrality, but they never theless aroused the greatest indignation among the public, which insisted that the persons involved should be punished. On the resignation of the Federal councillor Hoffmann, Gustave Ador (q.v.), chairman of the International Red Cross Committee, be came a member of the Federal Council. M. Ador stood for all that was best and most constructive in the work of Switzerland in the international sphere—for active charitable work, for the relief of prisoners of war and of the men in internment camps.
For the population of Switzerland, the war years were years of privation on the material side, and on the moral side of constant agitation without definite aim, especially in the German-speaking districts. It is not surprising that symptoms of exhaustion and moral strain should have appeared: and as a result there broke out in Switzerland a general strike of a political character as an echo of the German Revolution. This necessitated the mobiliza tion of the army on the day of the Armistice (Nov. is, 1918) ; and a large number of soldiers lost their lives as a result of influenza.