Most countries have an army and a navy as we have police and a watch-dog to keep out burglars. But Switzerland is one of the few countries in the World that has no seashore.So she can’t have a navy, and she doesn’t have to have much of an army either, because the mountains are like great walls to keep out the enemy. Switzerland kept out of both World Wars, although every country around her was fighting.

Switzerland is completely surrounded by other countries. On one side is France, on the other Germany, and on another Italy. So the Swiss have no language of their own. On the side nearest Italy they speak Italian, on the side nearest Germany they speak German and on the side nearest France they speak French. In fact, many Swiss people speak all three languages.

To get into Switzerland or out of Switzerland, or from one part of Switzerland to another, you don’t have to climb the mountains. You can go over the low places between the high mountains, but many of these low places are a mile or more high, so they are not so very low at that. These low places are called passes. One of these passes is named the Simplon; and Napoleon, the French general I told you about, once crossed the Simplon Pass with his army into Italy. But you can now go under and through the mountains, for in many places long tunnels have been built.

One of the longest tunnels is St. Gothard. The men who built it started to dig from both sides of the mountain, and the two holes they dug exactly met in the middle. Some people said it was wonderful that two tunnels, each miles long, dug from opposite sides of a mountain, should meet. The men replied, “Not at all. It would have been wonderful if the tunnels hadn’t met. We are not moles digging blindly. We had figured it out beforehand and we knew where we were digging.”

But the longest tunnel in the World is under the Simplon Pass. At one end of this tunnel is Switzerland and at the other end is Italy. It is over twelve miles long. I have been under the pass riding in a train through this tunnel and I have been over the top of the pass carried by my own two legs. It takes sixteen minutes to go through the tunnel.