LETTER FROM BERN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000100080009-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 31, 2000
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: December 12, 1953
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved
CPYRGHT
For ReleaVe'VE68/24 : CIA:R6P70-0005 ''-aftgclIF-0Mara-5ER
? )
LETTER FR.OM IlEkN
?
DECEMBER 1 the government. Actually, this elect on
THE election of the President of is pretty much a matter of form beca ise
Switzerland is scheduled to take in practice, unless a Councillor resigns
place here in Bern, the capital, on or dies, it is taken for granted that 11,e
December 17th, at a joint meeting of will be ralected. Every_ December, _one
the two houses of Parliament, which of the members of the Federal Coin-
will then be holding one of its four cul?a different one mo year?is el( ct-
annual three-week sessions. The Presi- cd the President ofSwitzerland by the
deney is the subject of one of Switzer- Parliament, and for the nextrtwelve
lanes few national. jokes, and it is told ' months he also presides over the Fedcral
in all font:-Of the country's languages? Council. Here igain the election is li:tle
German, French, Italian - and Ro- more than a formality, for the tradition
minch ..'"I'5VSS:r`1okd's ate 1 5 'high- is that the Presidency passes from one
ly cantonal in ch ii ictel i. example, Councillor to another in accorda ice
,a Swiss who lives on : 7covered : with an annual rotation system. 3e-
slopingdporeof ,Lake
=, ?
va, in the:. cause ignorance of the President's
canton! O' aud, will te -you that a? identity is considered a kind of (:: Vic
t ertain vineyard in the catgon of Zurich _virtue here, it is professed even by
is surrounded by a fence4 fine wire :' citizens who , can. rattle off the:A.6st
mesh, be?:6Use a railroa fris past itobscure names in - Swiss histor.y,f..nd
:'-- , . -.
and it has been found th.: grapes. from - Swiss history began on August 4:4291,
mi cher vineyards derail 'ains, An- when the leaders of three f --t Bs-
other Vaudois joke, th, One: directed tricts called Schwyz, Uri, and:
at the people in the 6 it of Bern, walden, seeking mutual pt ,ect on.
is about a Vaudois who v cd the;Palais drew up the pact upon which the p es-
ent_Swiss Confederation is based.
The President of Switzerland at thc
moment is a serious, hard-work ng
bald-headed gentleman of sixty.-)ne
...
n er-
Federal, here in the capital, and asked
a Bernese, "How manypeople work
in this building?" The lic_rnese replied,
"Oh, about half of them." But the in-
habitants of all the country's
twenty-two cantons tell one
another the same joke about
their President. The joke
runs as follows:
FritsT Swiss: "Who's go-
ing to be the new Presi-
dent?"
SECOND SIRIO: "How
would I knolvl. I don't
even know win) the old
President is."
The most sedate Swiss
is likely to burst into
wild laughter at this joke,
and there is some pride in
the laughter, too,, for the
people of Switzerland re-
gard the joke as an indica-
tion of their success in
decentralizing bureaucratic
power while maintaining
their federal unity. Every
year, the Swiss Parliament,
which is modelled after the
legislative system of the
United States and, consists
of the National Council
( a : hundred and 41411/-
six members) an the
Council of States (No:fy.-
four members) ,'elects a sev-
-maiApFisd(0joitift
lease 2000/08/
which constitutes the rig -
est administrative body of
named Etter. Actually, there
are several people here in the capital
who recognize him on sight and arc
not ashamed to admit it. Shortly after
seven every morning, President litter
boards a trolley for the ten-minute ride
to his office, in the Palais Federal?or
Bundeshaus, as it is known to the Ger-
man Swiss, of whom Etter is one. The
fare is thirty centimes (about seven
cents), but because the motorman of
the trolley is one of those who recognize
the President, Etter isi never- asked to
pay it. Etter has a brand-new Cadillac
limousine at his disposal for official rides,
but going to work is not one of them,
nor is his return home for the nationally
observed two-hour lunch.
Etter was born in Menzingen, a
small- town just south of Zurich. He
can speak all four of his country's lan-
guages, as well as Latin and Greek,
anti has travelled extensively in the
Swiss cantons. As a private tourist, he
has also visited France, Spain, Italy,
Germany, and Austria, but he has nev-
er been to the United States and he
speaks no English. his favorite pastime
:IS 'hunting; two or three times a year
ilid.-takes a few days off to bunt :hare,
!IV deer, or chamois?preferablyhin the
old'--cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Un7
terWalden, in the heart of Switzer-
land. In Bern, Etter lives in a square
stone house on a corner of the Kirch-
enfeldstrask, facing a large, modern
Gym ita Si1,1771 built mostly of
glass. The Tierpark is not
far away, and the President
usually Walks over there on
Sundays to look at the ani-
mals in its zoo, lie has
ten children?five sons and
five daughters?and four
grandchildren, and he and
his wife usually have a ref-
ugee child staying with
them. When lie visits the
zoo, he takes the refugee
chilli along. One of litter's
sons is a monk and one
of his - daughters is a min,
and Etter himself is a de-
vout Catholic. He is a mem-
ber of a middle-of-the-road
party, the Catholic Con-
servatives.
This is Etteeis fourth
term as President and he is
due to be President again
in 1960, provided he is still
a Federal Councillor and
none of his colleagues drop
out. His first term was in
1939, meaning that deaths
and resignations have con-
CPYRGHT
Approved
side rably speeded up the seven-year I
cycle during the time he has been a
member of the Council. Each Coun-
cillor is bead of an administrative de-
partment, and, upon being elected Pres-
ident, he continues to administer it, in
addition to performing such Presidential
duties as receiving foreign ambassadors,
and speaking over the radio to the four
and a half million people of Switzerland
on New Year's Day and again on Au-
gust 1st, which is a national holiday com-
memorating the birth of the Confedera-
tion. As Councillor, Etter is in charge
of the Department of the Interior,
which makes him responsible for forest
conservation, federal construction pro-
grams, and federal hygiene. In this
capacity, he receives a salary of forty-
eight thousand francs, or about eleven
thousand dollars, a year, like the other
Councillors, and he is paid an extra
three thousand francs for being Presi-
dent. The office of the Chief of the
Interior is a cool, high-ceilinged room
with dark-brown walls; two long, nar-
row windows look out on a public
park to the west, and two more long,
narrow windows face the Bernese Alps,
to the south. On the walls of Etter's
office are several oil paintings of moun-
tains, cloudy skies, grazing cattle, and
the like. The Swiss government buys
hundreds of paintings every year as
part of a federal program to encourage
artists, and because the Swiss museums
cannot hold them all, a good many of
them end up in government offices.
Etter has one secretary, which is what
the Chief of the Interior is entitled to.
A Councillor gets no extra office space
or clerical help just because he happens
to be the President of Switzerland.
or Release 2000/0,0/24 . cIA-RDP70-0010AROIX1
cal r arty, wnicn is another i,,,,,,.-
the-road group but lives up to its name
in at least one respect. Before the local
de 'ins were held a couple of ,weeks
or ,,... .
ci
agy if 6' canton of Vaud (each canton
sets its Own election date, usually for a
weekend in October or November),
some of the campaign posters in Lau-
sanne, the canton's leading city and the
center of Rubattel's legal and journal-
istic activities, were extraordinarily vio-
lent, and the most violent of all was the
Radical Party's. It read, "Who dares to
criticize the Radical Party? Nobody!"
'1 'he Party won the election, but enough
people dared to criticize it to make the
Socialist Party a close second, and the
election itself was severely criticized by
civic-minded folk for haying brought
out only sixty per cent of the electorate,
which, in Switzerland, is all male.
At the University of Lausanne,
where Rubattel studied jaw, he won
quite a reputation as a debater. So great i
were his forensic powers that his fel-
low-students, feeling that -these were
bound to lead him into politics, used to
twit him by singing, "Someday we shall
all he brothers and Rubattel will be
Federal Councillor," to the tune of the
"Internati)nale." Nowadays, most of .
Ruhattel's former classmates are ratherl
heavy, precise, slow-moving, slow-talk-
ing fathers of University of Lausanne
students, but whenever he runs into
two or three of them, they still burst
into their old song. Rubattel's office, like
Etter's?and, for that matter, like tbe
offices of all 0.e other Federal Couri-
cillors?is ,in the Palais Fed6ral an?, is
cool and ' lk: brown. Rubattel isliot
.,?
paid anyt gg extra for being lice-
President- -
t Both Pre
dent Rubatte
brown offie -
electing the:
President. TJ
chili-114r of tB
is . e lower
h .our Hou
. at it
a of a
e of Lt.
in t
ams in
viCillors'
e Palais
ig with
utain at 1
THE Councillor who is next in line
for the Presidency is a gray-haired,
spectacled French Swiss named Ro-
dolphe Rubattel, who is now serving as
Vice-President. A lawyer and journal-
ist, he was born in 1896 in Villarzel,
a small town between Bern and Lau-
sanne. This will be his first term as
head of the Swiss Confederation. He
is in charge of the Department of Pub-
lic Economy, which concerns itself
with such matters as foreign trade,
price controls, and the federal old-age-
insurance fund. (Every Swiss con-
tributes two per cent of his wages to
the insurance fund, which entitles him
to an average of about twenty-five dol-
lars a month after the age of sixty-
five.) Rubattel speaks French and Ger-
man, ,APPP:wsgtodFoxifielease, 200
Austria, as well as every canton in
Ho llelnno-c to the Ruth-
nt Etter and Vice-I1
will remain in tliei
while the Parham
w President and
two houses meet
National Council, w
)use and which is -
of Representatives'
venes against the b
uge mural showin
rne, with giffy cl
sky above,: and p
e distance; Like
es, both clambers
ederal, a 'large std
a reen coppef dome an
ntrance in iich ston
Q.000000-
Rh. At eight
ten days later,
tionalCounc
the two h
saying, "
President
k in the morning,
resident of the Na-
'oint meeting of
a little bell and
are going to elect the
e-1 Swiss Confederation."
Ballots will be.pas-s-ffed out to the members'
of both houses, and everybody will be
expected to write in the name of Ro-
dolphe Rubattel. Then the ballots will
be counted, the result will he announced
and applauded, and that will he that.
After a while, somebody will get around i
to visiting the new President and shak-
ing his hand, and on January 1st, he will
assume office without any ceremony and
make his New Year's speech over the
radio. At the start of his term, a photo-
graph of him may appear on the cover
of a picture magazine called Sic und Er.
During 1954, he will prepare the agen-
da for meetings of the Federal Council
and will preside at them. He will also
triple a few public speeches, probably on
the subject of neutrality. It is a subject
cp 'Which a Swiss President can hardly
r. .
wrong.
ssuming there is no change in the
Weup of the Federal 'Council, the
' sident scheduled for 1955 is Joseph
her, a lawyer, who is Councillor
charge of the Posts and Railways
artment. Then ,ill come Max
tpierre, a French-Swiss lawyer and
fessor of law, who is councillor of
t Foreign Affairs Department and
Switzerland's Foreigh Minister;
.?,
us Feldmann, still alto, ier lawyer,
j
is in charge orilie. ustice and
.e Department; a,hd .l-. ax Weber,
ial-science profeSStIr. ;'i't the Uni-
v ?,ity of Bern, who is the head of the
..
E ance Department, the only Socialist
the Federal Council, and the only
:of its members who speaks English.
her is also the only one of its mem-,
s who has ever been in the United
Skates. He made the trip, with his wife,
in 1922, in the hope of finding a job.
After visiting New York, Buffalo, Phil-
adelphia, and Chicago without success,
he came back to Switzerland. Still as-
suming that the status quo remains the
tatus quo, in 1959 Weber will be suc-
ceeded as President by Karl Kobelt, a
,civil engineer, who is in charge of the
Military Department, and then it will
he President Etter again.'
8 spout 1r. A largeiknc sculp-
depicting c three f st-district
w1iofdfled the C ederation
In the for. This winter's ses-
sion of the Par lament cgiens at six
/00N?4 :0PLetcPcfacklfu9)5AR4941P
DURING the past feW months,::
many Swiss have been acting as if
mountain climbing, a sport they have
so long taken for granted, had just
been discovered. Seven thousand fer-,
lers have recently joined the
ATine Club, bringing the mem-
A-Lp, y Lich 13 rcAricted to men,
iirty-nine thousand. There are also
lpine clutAtkpravechFoli Reitigase- 0c0,9,19yRtieCtsP7t9-9995RWO
lc, and more thousands are members
f these. This reawakening to the_chal-
nge of high peaks is due partly to
he admiration the Swiss feel for.. the ,
ritish conquest of 1VI:Onnt Everest in
--tile admiration
ay but even more
he Swiss feel for the ar conquest of
ount Everest last by two Swiss
xpeditions, one of w came to with-
-1 nine hundred fee of the summit.
wig Alpinists don' show the slight-
st ,yesen tment of the British achieve-
en. They peinS:ciut that there are
wave mouritainleaks of twenty-six
ionsand feet or more in the world?
ill Of them.in or near the Himalayas,
s it happens?and that of these only
:hree (Annapurna, Everest, and N'anga
Parbat) have been scaled. That, the
iwiss think, still leaves the -field wide
3 13 for anyone 7?teti-j, enough zeal,
ty, and money fei have a go at it.
A Swiss candy called Bonbons Or-
Onos is now done up in a cellophane
-)ag that also contains a photograph of
Mount Everest, with the route taken by
he British marked M, and a caption
xplaining that bonbons like those in
he bag were carried_ by the two Swiss
expeditions as well. as by the British
Dne and asking, "Peut-il y avoir de
mailleures referencels?" Swiss almanacs
for the coming year unanimously re-
-zord both the conquest and the two
near conquests of -Mount Everest with
far more dramatic appreciation than
they devote to the coronation of Queen
Elizabeth or to the death of Joseph
Stalin. The Swiss have long been al-
manac-crazy, becauze the isolated way
of life in their mantainous land has
made them cherish the simple, homely
veritiesin:Lwhich such books abound.
The nation's oldest almanac, called
Le VMtable Massager Boiteux de
Berne at Vevey, has just been pub-
lished in the little town of Vevey, near
Lausanne, for the two-hundred-and-
forty-seventh consecutive year. The
pages, always reserved for the most sig-
nificant event of the preceding twelve
months, to a diagrammatic study en-
titled "La Conquete du Plus Haut Som-
met du Monde," which shows exactly
what the Swiss and British expeditions
accomplished. For generations, the
Massager Boiteux has had the same cov-
er design?a woodcut of a lame mes-
senger bringing news to a group of
Swiss, comprising a solid citizen, a cler-
gyman, a soldier-, and a child, and the
whole surrounded by symbols, such as a
snail, representing the domestic hearth,
that are greatly appreciated in Switzer-
land. The AlmanachPastaloZzi, named
after the founder of the present system
of public education, is an almanac pill
out specially for children. The Al-
manacle Pestalozzi for 1954 not :only
records the conquest of Mount Everest
but includes, in addition to essays on how
to read a thermometer, how to sew ,(for
girls), and how to build a birdhouse
(for boys), a long, illustrated essay On
the joys and benefits of Alpinism7(for
boys and girls).
The best-selling book in Switzerland
at the moment is "Avant-Premieres a
l'Everest," by Gabriel Chevalley, Ren?
Dittert, and Raymond Lambert, three
of the Swiss who participated in one or
the other of the two expeditions that
came near reaching the top of Mount
Everest. Published by Arthaud, in Paris
and Grenoble, it sold thirty-four thou-
sand copies in its first three weeks. The
subject is the Swiss journeys to India
and Nepal and treks through the jun-
gles to the base of the mountain, and
the labor and pain involved in the at:7
tempts to attain_ the summit?attempt
that were frustrated by glaciers an
monsoons. Somehow, the book , de+
scribes the failures without making them
sound like failures. Swiss mountain
climbers are particularly proud of the
tributes that the British conquerors of
Mount Everest paid the Swiss expedi-
tions. A paper band around the dust
jacket of the Chevalley-Dittert-Lam-
heft book quotes Sir John Hunt, leader
of the British expedition, as saying,
vous autres, une bonne moitie de la
gloira." The latest issue of a Swiss Al-
pine journal (its name appears on its
cover in all four Swiss languages?Die
/Nen, Les Alpas, 2 Alp;, and Las
Alps?and its CQ ?rs write in
whichever of the f lease) car-
ries an artic10-!k .11eague,
in which they. ti mak-
ing information i ndated during
the two unsuccessful tries available- to.
Approved For Release 2 00/08/24-11,CIAADP70-00058R0001
1:41008001694e final result," they write.
"We climbed on the shoulders of our
Swiss fr.-- ds to the top of the moun-
tain." S a. Alpinists are touched to
the point'', Or-_. tears by this last state-
ment.
THE Swiss National Tourist Office
has bravely accepted, along with
?
many other new problems, the shift of
interest from the Alps to the Himalayan
region as the goal of serious mountain-
climbing expeditions, and it is trying to
stimulate interest in the Alps as the best
training ground for ,would-be scalers of
the highest peaks in the world. An-
other problem the Tourist Office faces is
what is widely referred to here as the
trou dd janvier?the January vacuum.
January is the slowest month of the
year in the Swiss tourist business, and,
coming after the -crowds that swarm to
Alpine resorts around Christmastime,
the slump has a particularly depressing
effect. Switzuland depends on its in-
come from tolirists to make up most of
the difference between .the five and a
quarter billion frIncs it spends on im-
ports and the fear and .tirreenquarters
billion it gets hack from its exWaS. A
couple of years o, the Swiss Associa-
tion of Hotelke4_rs, in a deteanined
effort to induce tourists to linger on
through January, offered 'a bonus of
fifty francs to every tou ,v4g4po ,stayed
on at 4 Jiptel fo,r at - weeks
after kolillays. Some tiketkty thou-
sand torts?about half Of the, frorn_
!England and about a tenth Th?
; from the United States?to val-
tagc of the offer. The hotelkee ere
disappointed, however, because Most of
the tourists, when they werehopefully
asked whether they wouldn't like to
take the bonus in credit for an even
longer stay, asked. for cash, checked
out of the hot4b, and spent the money?
a total of 1,0 1,84000 francs?elsewhere.
At the present titne? the United States
is one of the few nations (Switzerland
itself is another) that cloc not limit the
amount of currency. son can take
out of the country, and for a while the
Swiss were looking, across the Atlantic
for the tourists they so badly wan. For
the past three ze.us, the govertunent
has made an ml appropsiatiok to
present an alriciAl picture _dgEwiRer-
land to -AaVe_ rican tou_L110121.111.1k7hei re-
sults4Wdisc$244gin a the ap-
propinron was rforre this year.
The Swiss are now ,ginning their
hoPtsWest GerMany: Asugvcy of
_
the si'lMon published heVe` nOflong
otiosobost.3 Tr n ;
ago ,states, "The spotlight is On :the
NKrn o?
Approved For Release 2000/08/24: CIA-RDP70-00058R000100080009-3
CPYRGHT
only Alpine an se' vice. *4 Is based at
sSion, in the sunn VailiaXeiger
is a small, ge sunburned
man who lik g etter than to
land ski plane -nall patches of ice
high in the raiiiintains. He runs his
service with two American planes?a
four-seater Cessna 170 and a two-
seater Piper Super Cub?which he has
equipped with both wheels and retract-
able skis. Geiger's work includes rescu-
ing injured skiers, carrying luggage to
and from mountain cabins, bringing
food, wood, and mail to the Swiss who
. live on mountaintops the year round,
parachuting doctors down to sick peo-
ple, and, on Sunday mornings, bring-
ing a priest ten thousand feet up the
Weisshorn to say Mass for skiers who
don't want to take the time to go to a
church. The skiers start out for the
Weisshorn at 5 A.M. Five hours later,
Geiger delivers the priest, and after
Mass the skiers, fe4ling well protected,
set oil' down the mountain. Last year,
Geiger carried forty tons of stone, ce-
ment, wood, glass; and equipment up
to the 9,975-foot 'Mutthorn to build
a tourist cabin, which sleeps two hun-
dred. The job required five hundred
and thirty-five. landings. Geiger can
carry three passengers or six hundred
and sixty pounds of freight in the
Cessna and one passenger or five hun-
dred and fifty pull& of freight in the
Piper Super Cub. He charges the equiv-
alent of about seven cents a pound?
of passenger or 'freight?from Sion to
any point up to.. a height of thirteen
thousand feet. 14e charges passengers
seventy francs '(about sixteen dollars)
an hour for flights anywhere in the
Alps. Geiger has fourid two hundred
and forty glaciers in the mountains
that he can land on. The smallest
one?twelve thousand' .lfeet high and
thirty-seven hundred feet from the top
of Mont Blanc is. two hundred and
twenty-five feet long and ends in a
sheer drop of three thousand feet.
Geiger has Xinded there about fifty
times. At arickber of his frequent stops,
he has to land at a forty-degree angle
on a strip twO hundred and sixty feet
, long, halfway up the side of a mountain.
This is'7the landing strip that Geiger's
; wife aria six-year-old son, who often
accomp y him, like the best.
WISTprivate schools are so crowded
this year that many foreigners liv-
ing in Switzerland have had to enroll
their children in the public schools.
The parents of a couple of children,
both under ten, who were until?re-
cently enrolled in a private school in
the United States, are now living just
outside Lausanne, and they have been
overwhelmingly impressed by the fine
deportment their children are learning
in a public school there. At the be-
,:ginning of the term, the school authori-
ties sent the parents a list of rules that
the children are expected to abide by.
These rides state that students must
show respect to their elders, and es-
pecially to magistrates, the aged, the
..infirm, and women. They must not
use coarse language or commit brutal
acts. They must respect private prop-
erty. They must prepare their home-
work. They arc forbidden to loiter
on the streets, to smoke, to carry arms,
to mistreat animals, to go out alone
?"ter 8 P.M. between November 1st
'nil March 31st or after 9 P.M.
dur-
g the other months, to enter public
..tablishments like caf? bars, and beer
alls without their parents or a school
niatron, or to go to the cinema without
their parents. The parents of the two
I children from America were asked to
sign this document?and they did,
happily. ?LILLIAN Ross
Approved For Release 2000/08/24: CIA-RDP70-00058R000100080009-3