The small neutral States were threatened last week with Socialist
insurrections, doubtless inspired from Berlin, but the Governments stood firm and maintained order. The movement in Holland was directed by M. Troelstra, who has made himself notorious during the war by his intimate relations with Herr Scheidemann, the ex-Emperor's tame Socialist. He summoned the Dutch people to rise, but the crowds that assembled wore Orange favours, and Troelstra thereupon abandoned his seditious scheme. In Sweden a similar rising was foiled by the good sense of M. Branting, the Socialist leader, who has supported the Allied cause consistently- and is hated and feared in Germany In Switzerland the. plotters began by declaring a general strike. The. Federal Government repressed the riots which occurred in the. Ziirich district, always infested with German agents. It expelled the Russian Bolshevik envoy, and, none too soon, set about:ridding Switzerland. of the other foreign Anarchists who, have abused Swiss hospitality. The German attempt to throw- the neutral. neighbours into confusion thus appears-to have failed.
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