In Switzerland Arms Are In Every Man's Hands; He Is Educated
To Be A Soldier, And Taught That The Liberties Of His Country Depend On
His Skill And Valor.
The worst effect, perhaps of this military education
is, that the Swiss, when other means of subsistence are not easily found,
become military adventurers and sell their services to the first
purchaser.
Meantime, nobody is regarded as properly fitted for his duties
as a member of the state, who is not skilled in the use of arms.
Target-shooting, _Freischiessen_, is the national amusement of
Switzerland, and has been so ever since the days of Tell; occasions of
target-shooting are prescribed and superintended by the public
authorities. They were practicing it at the stately city of Berne when we
visited it; they were practicing it at various other places as we passed.
Every town is provided with a public shooting-ground near its gates.
It was at one of the most remarkable of these towns; it was at Freiburg,
Catholic Freiburg, full of Catholic seminaries and convents, in the
churches of which you may hear the shrill voices of the nuns chanting
matins, themselves unseen; it was at Freiburg, grandly seated on the
craggy banks of her rivers, flowing in deep gulfs, spanned by the loftiest
and longest chain-bridges in the world, that I saw another evidence of
the fact that Switzerland is the only place on the continent where freedom
is understood, or allowed to have an existence.
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