Imperial Valley press., 1916-01-27

trements neatly piled at his feet.
Then the officer in command gave
some order, don't know what, and
the lines Strengthened up and there
was some kind of wonderfully rigid
inspection. Then there were some
more orders and the companies
marched away down the street.-The,
stalwart, outstanding men, both rug
ged and intelligent.
AS they passed, two faces in one
of the companies suddenly struck me
as familiar. l looked again and saw
that marching in the ranks as pri-
vate was the proprietor of the hotel
where l lived, and in front Of him
strobe as his commanding officer, lieu
tenant or captain or something, his
head waiter.
Of course l laughed at this; it
seemed funny. But found the Swiss
didn't laugh at it. They found it per-
fectly right and in accordance with
their customs and ideas. All about
Switzerland you can find such things,
and more than one proprietor of
store or factory has marched under the
orders of one of bis clerks.
In Switzerland, every man (unless
he is physically or mentally, disquali
fied) is member of the Swiss army.
Advancement and a career in that
army are open to anyone that will
undertake the necessary studies, and
/ remember that once the highest
ranking officer in that army was a
hotel keeper of Lucerne. He was an
extremely able man, too, and the ma
neuvers under his direction called forth
unstinted praise from all beholders.
! So this illustrates the second great
point. In Switzerland there is uni
versal military training, but anything
like a military caste or an officer
class is impossible because military
training is carried on simultaneously
with civil careers and does not inter-
fere with them. A man may be a
first class and highly successful law
yer, journalist, engineer, business man
or what you will and at the same time
be skilled soldier of developed train
ing and able to serve his country at
any time in place of high command
There is small body of permanent
officers, about 200 all told, maintained
as instructors, whose sole business is
to study and teach modern military
science. These learned men get every
wrinkle in the business as fast as it
shows up anywhere, test it, adopt it
if good, throw it away if bad, and
carefully teach the selected residue to
the soldiers under their care. Which,
as you see, is another good point. 1t
keeps the Swiss army up to date, but
avoids Improbable expense, cumber-
some establishments and the unspeak-
able black curse Of militarism as it is
known in monarchical countries and
to the prejudices of the American peo-
pie. But this is different.
The total expense of the Swiss ar
my in times of peace is $7,00O,00O a
year.
Each American soldier costs the
American government % times as
much as each Swiss soldier costs the
Swiss government.
If we had the Swiss system we
should have an army of 100000
trained men, and it would not cost us
very much more than our present ar
my of $4,000 men.
There is bill in Congress to pro-
vide this country with a system some
what like the Swiss, but modified to
suit our differing conditions. If you
will note the above facts carefully you
will see several reasons why that bill
should be passed.
But about that incident at Montreux.
They marched out that morning for
their two weeks of field training. /
was there when they came back. They
went to their homes, deposited there
the rifles, knapsacks, uniforms and
the rest, donned citizens attire and
took up again their usual work, the
blacksmiths, clerks, plasterers, mill
hands, proprietors and the rest. Our
hotel keeper beamed again in his ac-
customed place, the head waiter af-
fably commanded the dining room as
before. Everything was the same ex-
cept that each had larger share of
health, a new sense of democracy and
faith renewed to serve the country
J thew loved