Siegmund Feilbogen, La Convention du Saint-Gothard. L’agitation actuelle et les conséquences du rejet (January 1911)

Feilbogen’s political-economic article in the Journal des Économistes examines Swiss opposition to the proposed Saint-Gothard railway convention and develops a diplomatic alternative to its ratification. Moving from popular agitation to treaty interpretation and the consequences of rejection, it argues that Switzerland can preserve its international transport obligations without accepting perpetual constraints on its entire railway network. A postscript broadens the dispute into a critique of indefinitely binding treaty clauses.

The opening presents opposition as a disciplined assertion of national independence. More than two hundred thousand petition signatures effectively substitute for a legally unavailable referendum. Feilbogen stresses the movement’s restraint and its grounding in documentary evidence, particularly the official texts assembled by Horace Michéli. Its central anxiety is that great powers might turn economic arrangements into political supervision of smaller states. His proposed compromise therefore distinguishes negotiable material concessions from an unacceptable surrender of future autonomy:

Nous proposons de consentir au pis aller à tous les sacrifices matériels, pourtant considérables, qu'entraînerait le projet de convention, mais d'avoir en vue, sans faiblesse aucune, la défense de l'indépendance politique, en repoussant l'établissement irrévocable de la clause de la nation la plus favorisée sur tout le réseau des chemins de fer suisses.

English translation: We propose, if the worst comes to the worst, to consent to all the material sacrifices, considerable though they are, which the draft convention would entail, but to keep in view, without any weakness, the defence of political independence, by rejecting the irrevocable establishment of the most-favoured-nation clause over the entire network of the Swiss railways.

This distinction allows Feilbogen to frame compromise as compatible with both Swiss independence and German economic interests. He questions the practical value of most-favoured-nation treatment if its political effects encourage Switzerland to adopt protectionism: equal treatment could then mean equality in disadvantages. Germany’s insistence on the disputed clause becomes, in his account, more a matter of prestige than of substantial commercial benefit.

The article next contests claims that rejection would oblige Switzerland to repay eighty-five million francs in foreign subsidies. Although repayment might be partly offset by avoiding reductions in mountain tariffs, Feilbogen rejects a retaliatory restriction of transit as damaging to European trade and unnecessary. His preferred response is legal continuity:

En cas de rejet de la convention, le Conseil fédéral n'aurait qu'une chose à faire: se retrancher derrière les anciens traités du 15 octobre 1869 et du 12 mars 1878; il aurait simplement à continuer le régime de ces traités.

English translation: In the event of the convention's rejection, the Federal Council would have but one thing to do: to fall back upon the old treaties of 15 October 1869 and 12 March 1878; it would simply have to continue the regime of those treaties.

The treaties, he argues, secured the construction and operation of an international connection, not the permanent existence of a private railway company. The subsidizing powers had already received the infrastructure benefits for which they paid; moreover, their original guarantee lay with the federal government. Public acquisition consequently need not impair their contractual rights. Switzerland should promise to maintain transport conditions and refrain from raising tariffs without prior agreement, subject to reciprocity, while offering renewed negotiations without the perpetual network-wide clause.

Feilbogen also separates foreign representation on the railway’s governing board from binding treaty obligations. Such representation arose voluntarily after the need for additional subsidies in 1878, under conditions of uncertainty about construction and operation. A successfully functioning railway under state management no longer presents the same risks. If disagreement persists, arbitration is appropriate for this limited administrative issue, but not for the sovereign right of acquisition itself.

The postscript locates the interpretive difficulty in Article 15 of the 1869 convention. Its wording combines two different eventualities: merger with other Swiss railways and construction of additional lines by the Gothard company. Feilbogen argues that extending obligations to modest new lines cannot justify extending them to the whole national network after a large-scale merger. An awkwardly drafted provision should not generate consequences beyond the negotiators’ intentions.

Chaque Etat est une personne morale et ne peut réclamer que ce qui lui est dû en vertu de l'équité.

English translation: Every State is a moral person and can claim only what is due to it in virtue of equity.

Here equity limits literal interpretation. Feilbogen contrasts interstate obligations with commercial litigation in which an advocate might exploit defective wording to its utmost. The larger significance of the Gothard dispute is thus the relationship between contractual continuity and national freedom: legitimate economic guarantees must remain distinguishable from permanent political dependence. His closing warning makes that principle explicit:

On voit où il peut conduire; il rend une nation esclave à jamais d'une parole arrachée à un moment de faiblesse.

English translation: One sees where it may lead; it makes a nation forever the slave of a word wrung from it in a moment of weakness.