SWISS AND SWITZERLAND.
SWISS AND SWITZERLAND.
Neuhausen, Switzerland, July 13, 1905.
Soon after I arrived in Switzerland I inquired at a Geneva hotel the name of the President of the Republic of Switzerland. The hall porter (about the same as chief clerk) could not tell me, nor could he find out on inquiry around the office. Several times in Geneva I asked the same question, but always in vain. One or two men thought they knew, but they were not sure, and, as I learned afterward, they guessed wrong. I kept at the work of finding out who was the chief executive until I reached Lucerne. In a bookstore there my question aroused the interest of the proprietor, who spoke good English, and he inquired around until he found out that the President of Switzerland is named Brenner. During the process I suppose I asked a dozen educated Swiss, and three-fourths of them could give me promptly the name of the President of the United States, but not the name of their own President. Of course there is a reason for what would be fearful ignorance in any other country. The President of Switzerland doesn’t amount to as much as the Vice-President of the United States, and it would stagger a good many Americans to tell who was Vice-President before Roosevelt. Switzerland is a rather loosely bound together confederation of cantons (states). The cantons are jealous of the federal government,and give it very little power. Up to a few years ago there would be tariffs in some cantons against importations from others. The general government has the power to do the international business, but Switzerland keeps out of European politics. It would have little or no power as an offensive nation with its three million of people, and so it contents itself with furnishing scenery, wine, watches, music-boxes and good air to the inhabitants of other countries who are able to buy. The federal government consists of a congress composed of representatives from the cantons made up like our Senate and House. This congress elects an executive committee of seven, and the President of Switzerland is merely the chairman of that executive committee. Berne is the capital of Switzerland and the congress meets there, but it can only propose important legislation, which is then submitted to the people, who usually defeat it. The cantons of Switzerland have various kinds of republican government. Some have legislatures, some councils, and in a few of the small ones, where it is practicable, the government acts by mass meetings of the people, with an executive or a committee to carry out the legislation. The small area of the country and of the twenty-two cantons (they average about the size of Reno county, but some are not bigger than a commissioner district) makes the government a peculiar proposition. There is no foreign immigration, no uneducated class, and no one whose ancestors have not been self-governing for a generation. And yet as they have remodeled their local and federal constitutionsand charters, they have come closer to the American methods all the time, the only important difference being the initiative and referendum, which is after all only a continuance of their ancient “land gemeinde,” or mass meetings of the people at which measures were considered and officers elected, the voting now being done by ballot instead of holding up the hands.
As I have written before, in some cantons the people use one language and in some another. Likewise in some everybody is a Protestant and in others everybody is a Catholic; very seldom both faiths in one canton. During the Reformation and for a number of years afterward the Swiss fought and killed each other for the love of God as fiercely as in any other country. Switzerland and southern Germany, which borders on it, were the fields in which the great Reformers did their best and worst work. The Reformation in Switzerland was double-headed. One branch, led by Calvin, was marked by what we call Puritan austerity, and had its headquarters at Geneva. From there went John Knox to Scotland and a host of eminent preachers to England and other countries, forming what is now called the Presbyterian Church. Zwingli, at Zurich, was a milder, gentler teacher, and his kind of Protestantism grew most in Switzerland. Luther, only a little way off, had still another kind of Protestantism, and each of the three differed considerably in confession of faith, Calvin standing on the principle of predestination, Luther holding to transubstantiation, or the doctrineof the actual presence of the body of our Saviour in communion, Zwingli insisting that communion was only symbolic. Mutual friends brought Zwingli and Luther together, and when they could not agree, Zwingli held out his hand in parting and Luther would not even shake hands. Zwingli was killed in a battle in a religious war with the Catholics, but his creed really became the dominant one in Swiss Protestantism. Calvin had Servetus burned to death because he denied the trinity.
So you see in the good old days in Switzerland there was a hard time for the plain and honest person trying to do what was right. Those times are past now, and Protestant and Catholic cantons get along peaceably; but there is still friction. Each canton in Switzerland looks after its educational matters and there are good schools everywhere. In nearly every city is a big university. I suppose that in proportion to population there are more university graduates in Switzerland than in any other country on earth. In America the young men and women too often cut short their education in order to get into business. In Switzerland, there are no such alluring opportunities, and the students stay till graduation. A young Swiss will go through the university and then go to work at the trade of his father. In America the young man would want to “do better” and really does worse by becoming a lawyer or an editor. Even good things have their bad features, and American colleges make mighty poor professional men out of material which was intended for good mechanics and farmers.
We spent a couple of days in Zurich, the largest city of Switzerland. Its special industry is silk-making, and the silk and embroidery stores are beautiful. The main business street of Zurich has two rows of trees like First avenue in Hutchinson, and the result is a delightful change from the usual hot, bare main street of a city. And that reminds me that it is a law in Switzerland or in the forest cantons that no one can cut down a tree except by official permission, and then another must be planted to take its place.
In the agricultural and pastoral parts of Switzerland a great deal of land is held “in common,” that is government land, under the control of the canton, not for sale at any price, but for the use of the people of the community under strict regulations. So a Swiss peasant will have a few acres of land of his own, a few cattle, and a right as a citizen to pasture on the common ground and a share of the profits of the forest. Immigration is not invited, although tourists with money are welcomed, for the more people the less the share of each in the common fund. There can hardly be any poverty in Switzerland, except, of course, in the cities. Every Swiss peasant can make a living if he will work. But neither can he be expected to get rich nor be a bigger man than his father. He must follow the beaten path marked out by centuries of custom and more firmly established than the unwritten constitution of the country.
I am getting more and more impressed with the fallacy of “cheapness” in Europe. Comparing priceswith those of Hutchinson, I find that the things which are cheaper here are silks, kid gloves, diamonds, and the products of labor like embroidery, lace, clocks, wood carvings, tailor-made clothes and straw hats (poorly made). Cotton goods, linen goods, shoes, iron and steel, bread and meat, coffee, and most of what we call necessities of life, are higher in Europe than in America. It is the people who are cheap and not the things; and when I say “cheap” I do not mean lacking in energy, ability, or industry, but in opportunity to make more than a living, to have leisure or the common luxuries and often necessities.
This is the last night in Switzerland. To-morrow we cross the line to Constance, which is in Germany, and which is spelled Konstanz and abbreviated “Kaz.,” which makes it near to “Kas.” Neuhausen is the place where the Rhine makes its big leap down the rocks, a fall of sixty feet, and on account of the volume of water the grandest in Europe. It is the Niagara Falls of the Alpine country, but it is not in the same class with Niagara Falls, U. S. A. The Rhine is about as wide as the Kaw at Topeka, but much deeper, and the falls are about four times the height of Bowersock’s dam at Lawrence. A beautiful hotel faces the roaring torrent as it precipitates itself over the rocks amid clouds of spray. The prices at the hotel are higher than the falls. I can only call to mind one place where you feel that you are being more genteelly robbed with your own consent, and that is at Niagara Falls, New York. But our Niagara Falls are higher to correspond.