England lend the Schweiz. Von Wilhelm Oechali. (Zurich : Ness
Zfircher Zeitung reprint.)—The well-known Professor of History at the University of Zurich has reprinted in this pam- phlet some interesting and authoritative articles on our relations with Switzerland in the past. At the Reformation English and Scottish Protestants drew their inspiration from Zurich and Geneva rather than from Wittenberg. Cromwell, intervening on behalf of the Waldenses, induced the Protestant Cantons as well as the French King to make common cause with him against the Duke of Savoy. In the critical years after 1815, when the Confederation was reconstituted on a firm basis, Great Britain proved to be Switzerland's only true friend. British influence alone prevented Prussia and Austria from inter- vening by force on behalf of the reactionary and anti-federalist parties, and, in particular, of the seven Roman Catholic Cantons which desired to form a separate Confederation or Bond erbund. Palmerston's adroitness in raising difficulties when a European force was about to march into Stiitzerland in 1847 gave the Federalists time to crush the Sonderbund and confront the Powers with an accomplished fact. Nine years later the King of Prussia tried to assert his hereditary rights over Neuchatel— rights which, oddly enough, had been transferred by our William of Orange to his cousin, the first King of Prussia. In 1856 the Royalist rebellion stirred up by Prussian agents in Neuchatel was quickly suppressed and the rebels were put in gaol. The Federal Council, with our moral support, made it clear that the five hundred rebels would be tried and punished if Prussia did not renounce all her claims to Neuchatel. Napoleon III. was induced to play the Prussian game, but the Swiss rulers, en- couraged by Lord Clarendon, paid no attention to French per- suasions or Prussian threats. The Prussian King, fearing the dis- credit that would fall upon him if his miserable agents were brought to public trial, therefore gave way, and in 1857 re- nounced the phantom sovereignty of his "beloved and loyal little land in the Jura." It is pleasant to be reminded by a Swiss historian that Great Britain played 80 honourable and unselfish a part in the making of modem Switzerland.
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