Brave Professor

To be against neutrality in Switzerland is like being against virtue or ice-cream sodas in the U.S. The Swiss, trusting in their mountains, their tough little army, and their luck, have not been in a war for 137 years, have determinedly stayed out of Europe's attempt to organize a joint defense. Yet a bold, bad professor, one Marcel Beck of the University of Zurich, dares question the wisdom of Swiss isolationism. The National Day Committee, a well-meaning group which organizes patriotic rallies, invited Professor Beck to speak on the 661st anniversary celebration of Swiss independence. His speech was a shocker:

"The man in the street does not understand why he should be . . . neutral in front of somebody whose aim it is to force upon us opinions which we cannot tolerate. Our being enemies of any form of absolutism has its consequences and should Europe go to war over this problem, we would not be spared this time . . . [We must] sacrifice some of our national sovereignty to a European community . . . Neutrality [is not] the sole source of our much-beloved material well-being . . . Fate or the grace of God which saved us in two wars . . . cannot [be] building stones for a policy . . . At a time when Europe is in the midst of . . . political and ideological currents that nobody can ignore, neutrality . . . is a thing of the past, to be chucked overboard . . ."

These were brave words, and it was time that someone spoke them in Switzerland. Only trouble: they were never spoken. The day before Beck was to make his speech, an advance copy reached the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (circ. 70,000), Switzerland's most influential newspaper. Shocked to the core of their neutral souls, the editors alerted the National Day Committee and Zurich's Board of Education. Result: Beck delivered a pallid speech from which his blast at neutrality had carefully been blue-penciled.

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