In the spring of 1917, when Doctor Richard Diver first arrived in Zurich, he was twenty-six years old, a fine age for a man, indeed the very acme¹ of bachelorhood. Even in war-time days, it was a fine age for Dick, who was already too valuable, too much of a capital investment to be shot off in a gun. Years later it seemed to him that even in this sanctuary² he did not escape lightly, but about that he never fully³ made up his mind — in 1917 he laughed at the idea, saying apologetically that the war didn’t touch him at all. Instructions from his local board were that he was to complete his studies in Zurich and take a degree as he had planned.

Switzerland was an island, washed on one side by the waves of thunder around Gorizia and on another by the cataracts⁴ along the Somme and the Aisne. For once there seemed more intriguing⁵ strangers than sick ones in the cantons, but that had to be guessed at — the men who whispered in the little cafés of Berne and Geneva were as likely to be diamond salesmen or commercial travellers. However, no one had missed the long trains of blinded or one-legged men, or dying trunks, that crossed each other between the bright lakes of Constance and Neuchatel. In the beer-halls and shop- windows were bright posters presenting the Swiss defending their frontiers in 1914 — with inspiring ferocity young men and old men glared down from the mountains at phantom⁶ French and Germans; the purpose was to assure the Swiss heart that it had shared the contagious⁷ glory of those days. As the massacre⁸ continued the posters withered⁹ away, and no country was more surprised than its sister republic when the United States

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