Siegmund Feilbogen, La Convention du Gothard (1910)

Siegmund Feilbogen’s article in the Journal des économistes examines the proposed Gotthard Convention of 13 October 1909 as a conflict between international railway cooperation and Swiss sovereignty. Moving from the railway’s financing to the negotiations surrounding its purchase by the Swiss state, he distinguishes negotiable economic concessions from an unacceptable perpetual restriction on national transport policy.

The Gotthard railway served predominantly German and Italian transit. Germany and Italy had contributed 85 million francs toward its construction, seeking commercial communication between two countries without a common border rather than substantial direct financial returns. Feilbogen argues that the nearly fivefold growth of their traffic over twenty-five years fulfilled that original purpose:

En réalité, c'était seulement ce bénéfice commercial que les Etats engagés avaient escompté, donc, même au point de vue moral, ils n'ont plus rien à demander.

English translation: In reality, it was only this commercial benefit that the States party had counted upon; hence, even from the moral point of view, they have nothing further to demand.

This distinction between an investment’s commercial purpose and a continuing entitlement frames his criticism of foreign demands. The original treaties confined most-favoured-nation treatment to the Gotthard line and provided for tariff reductions only if net revenue exceeded a threshold never reached. Feilbogen nevertheless faults the Swiss Federal Council for proceeding toward purchase without first clarifying the two powers’ claims. Notified in 1904, Germany and Italy replied only in 1909, shortly before the scheduled transfer, asserting that Swiss acquisition required their consent. He rejects the supporting legal argument and highlights Germany’s inconsistency in challenging abroad a policy of state railway acquisition it defended at home.

Under this pressure, the Federal Council offered two concessions: substantial tariff reductions and the extension of perpetual most-favoured-nation treatment to the entire Swiss network. Although the projected revenue losses threatened Switzerland’s modest budget surplus, Feilbogen treats the second concession as more dangerous. His central conceptual move is to distinguish restrictions bounded by territory or duration from obligations unlimited in both:

Or, si un pays peut bien admettre, sans danger pour son indépendance, qu'une partie limitée de son territoire soit ainsi contrôlée à perpétuité; ou bien que tout le territoire y soit soumis, mais pour une époque strictement déterminée, ce contrôle devient une servitude intolérable s'il peut s'exercer sans limite, ni de temps, ni d'espace.

English translation: Now, while a country may well admit, without danger to its independence, that a limited part of its territory be thus controlled in perpetuity, or else that the whole of its territory be subjected to such control, but for a strictly determined period, this control becomes an intolerable servitude if it may be exercised without limit either of time or of space.

Drawing on the Swiss publicists Steiger and Micheli, he compares the proposed clause with Article 11 of the Treaty of Frankfurt. A guarantee of equal treatment could paradoxically encourage protectionism: Switzerland might refuse otherwise affordable concessions to France because they would also have to benefit Germany and Italy. The clause would therefore constrain future bargaining and give two great powers a standing pretext for intervention. Swiss independence matters here both as national self-government and as a condition of European peace.

Feilbogen also insists that resistance remains constitutionally possible. Under Article 85 of the Swiss Constitution, the Federal Assembly has the power to conclude treaties, not merely to ratify an agreement already binding upon it. German parliamentary approval consequently does not make the proposed convention unalterable.

The conclusion qualifies the article’s earlier financial alarm without weakening its political objection:

En effet, toute réduction des tarifs entraîne une augmentation de trafic et guérit ainsi les plaies qu'elle a pu causer.

English translation: Indeed, every reduction of tariffs brings with it an increase of traffic and thus heals the wounds it may have caused.

Greater traffic could offset lost tariff revenue, while Article 12 would allow Switzerland to request revision if the reductions produced a deficit on the Gotthard network. Feilbogen acknowledges that separate accounting and the difficulty of securing consent limit this safeguard. Nevertheless, he accepts financial concessions in the general interest of easier transport, provided Switzerland is spared the irrevocable most-favoured-nation obligation. The article’s significance lies in this separation of commercial openness from political subordination: cheaper transit can be mutually beneficial without justifying permanent foreign control over the terms of Swiss railway policy.