Pepperpots on Plainpalais

Last week Geneva, "City of Peace," looked like home to Chile's delegation at the League of Nations. An editor was in jail, placards were up on the street corners warning crowds not to congregate, machine gun squads patroled the streets, an angry city attended the funeral of eleven citizens shot dead (43 were wounded) in the worst riot Switzerland has seen in nearly a generation.

The Government of the Swiss Confederation is probably the nearest practical approach to democratic Socialism in the world. Railroads, posts, telegraphs, belong to the State, public utilities are closely supervised. There is universal military training, though citizens only serve two weeks a year after their first two months' training (three months for the cavalry). Citizens can and frequently do veto unpopular laws passed by the Federal Assembly by direct referendum. Inherited wealth is heavily taxed in most cantons. The President has very limited powers, serves for one year only.

But, withal, Switzerland has a very deep respect for the rights of property and hence many a continental who is afraid of keeping his money at home, keeps it in Switzerland. This and the fact that Switzerland's well trained secret service gives short shrift to Communists or professional agitators enrages the country's left-wing Socialists.

Recently Deputy Leon Nicole, Socialist editor of Le Travail, published charges of graft and financial scandal in the canton government of Geneva. Swiss conservatives retorted that Deputy Nicole and his ally Jacques Dicke, a naturalized Russian, were really Communist agents in the pay of Moscow. They organized an anti-Communist mass meeting in Geneva's Community Hall. Editor Nicole urged his followers to break it up, then hold a protest meeting of their own in the Plaine de Plainpalais, the Union Square of Geneva. At this point hysteria seized Geneva authorities, who seldom have a riot to deal with. Troops were called out. the only troops available being a battalion of 20-year-old boys who had worn uniforms for less than two weeks.

"To the government which has mobilized against us the police and the army." shouted Deputy Nicole, "we must respond by revolution!"

Out to Plainpalais to break up the Socialists' meeting marched the young conscripts. They were promptly hissed not only by the Socialists but by numbers of bourgeois bystanders, who felt this show of force a disgrace to the home of the League of Nations. Somebody started throwing pepper. City toughs tried to snatch rifles from the young soldiers' hands. Up on the double came a second company with a Lewis gun. Without any warning, the machine gunners opened fire, shooting not over the heads of the crowd but into the pavement.

Even while the guns were being unlimbered the crowd could not believe the boys were in earnest. They did when plaster spurted from the walls of buildings and bullets buzzed in their ears. Eight people were killed instantly. A little child had his jaw blown away. A young man died in his mother's arms. One proud father went out to the park to see his son march with the machine gun company. He fell with a bullet through the lungs. It was different from shooting on the range. A white-faced machine gunner dropped his piece, fled screaming in hysterics.

Editor Nicole was promptly arrested and jailed. Swiss labor organizations threatened a general strike, then gave this up for a demonstration at the funeral of the victims of the ''Massacre of Plainpalais." At the week's end it seemed unlikely that the public would ever know who was responsible for the order to fire. A military investigation was ordered, soft pedaled. Said Giuseppe Motto, President of Switzerland and native of the country's one Italian canton:

"Appeals to violence can lead only to such results. One thing is certain, the troops conducted themselves as they should."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.