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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Since the referendum on the League of Nations of May 16, 1920, the most important question to be dealt with by the Swiss people was the initiative on treaties, accepted January 30 of this year. The initiative was presented in the form of an amendment to Article 89 of the federal constitution (the referendum article), and may be translated as follows:
“Treaties with foreign powers which are concluded without limit of time or for a period of more than fifteen years shall also be submitted to the people for acceptance or rejection upon demand of 30,000 Swiss citizens qualified to vote, or of eight cantons.”
1 Cf. Macy, Jesse, “The Swiss as Teachers of Democracy,” Review of Reviews, Vol. 47 (June, 1913), pp. 711–714.Google Scholar
2 Berner Bund, January 31, 1921. The vote of several communes in Ticino had not been received at the time the above figures were printed. On the same day that the Swiss people voted “yes” by so overwhelming a majority on the treaty initiative, they voted “no” by an even greater majority on a purely domestic question, i.e., the military justice bill, submitted to them under the optional referendum. This bill, backed by Socialists and anti-militarists, proposed to substitute the varying codes of the twenty-five cantons for the uniform federal penal provisions in case coming under military law. Soldiers guilty of violations were to be tried, not in the federal courts, but in the courts of the canton where the offence occurred. The opponents of the bill denounced it as a revolutionary attempt to break down all discipline in the army, and the country sustained them by a vote of 384,446 to 193,000. Now that the Swiss army system has been freed from this menace, it is generally conceded that the hardships imposed by the outworn penal law of 1851, will be removed by ordinary legislative processes.
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