[65] In the district of Saffelare, a part of East Flanders, which nature has endowed with an unproductive but easily cultivated sandy soil, the territory is composed of 37,000 acres and has to nourish 30,000 inhabitants, all living by agriculture; and yet these peasants not only grow their own food, but they also export agricultural produce, and pay rents to the amount of from fifteen to twenty-five dollars per acre. (Krapotkin, “The Forum,” August, 1890.)
[66] In the matter of these capitulations the Cantons claimed that, first, they never granted troops to any prince or state but by virtue of some preceding alliance; second, they granted troops only for the defence of the state they were given to, and not to act offensively; third, that the sovereign never received any subsidy or other advantages from it. The Cantons contented themselves with giving such auxiliary troops as were stipulated by their alliance and procuring a beneficial service for their subjects, without reserving profit to themselves. But in spite of the contention that these mercenaries espoused only a just quarrel, such service was a source of social no less than of political ills, and seriously impaired, for the time, the dignity and standing of the country.
[67] Primi in omnibus prœliis oculi vincuntur.—Tacitus.
[68] Even the Cantons, from the first institution of their governments and up to the time the Confederation assumed control of the military service, never kept in pay any standing troops. During the wars with the House of Austria the service was performed by militia, who were paid by the respective Cantons while kept in the field, and dismissed as soon as the campaign was ended.
[69] The minimum height for a recruit in the United States army is five feet four inches, weight one hundred and twenty-five pounds, and chest measure thirty-two inches.
[70] United States Revised Statutes, Sec. 1625, makes subject to enrolment in the militia “every able-bodied male citizen of the respective States, resident therein,” etc.
[71] “When the citizens of Geneva were alarmed in the night [the Escalade of December 12, 1602], in the depth of winter, by the enemy, they found their muskets sooner than their shoes.”—Rousseau.
[72] The report of 1887 for the Canton of Bern gives 1,925,580 francs expended on the cantonal and communal schools, not including the university.
[73] In July of this year (1890) a statue of Pestalozzi was dedicated at Yverdon, on the Lake of Neuchâtel, for it was there that, after many struggles with adversity, he founded, at the beginning of this century, the school which was perhaps more deeply and lastingly useful than any school that ever existed, by spreading the educational tenets and methods of its famous master throughout Europe, and later across to America, with contagious force. The unveiling of the monument was accompanied with a Cantate patriotique by a choir of a thousand children. The statue represents Pestalozzi with a boy and girl whom he is instructing by his side, and bears the simple inscription, “Henry Pestalozzi, 1746-1827. Monument erected by general subscription 1890.”
[74] The University of Geneva, at the close of the last century, known as the College of Geneva, and which exerted a wide influence in Europe, being temporarily suppressed during the revolution which had taken place, proposed, through its faculty, the transplanting of the college in a body to the United States. To Washington, who had in view the devoting of a quite large amount of money to the founding, or to the support, of institutions of learning, Jefferson wrote a letter on February 23, 1795, in which he laid before him the plan for the transferring of this institution to the national capital; and in the letter Jefferson characterized the College of Geneva as one of the eyes of Europe in matters of science, the University of Edinburgh being the other.