September 15, 1917.
"Revue mensuelle," Geneva, October, 1917.
XIV
YOUNG SWITZERLAND
IF we were to attempt to found our judgment upon Swiss periodical literature, we should form a very false opinion regarding the public mind of Switzerland. In this land, as everywhere, the press is from ten to twenty years behind the intellectual and moral development of the people. The Swiss papers and other periodicals are few in number, compared with those of neighbouring nations. Most of them are controlled by quite a small group of persons, and nearly every one of them serves to express the prejudices, the interests, and the routinism of middle-aged or elderly persons. Among such as are prominent in this journalistic world, even those who are spoken of as young, if they ever have been young in mind, are now so only in the eyes of their elders, of elders who refuse to admit that they have grown old.... "Young man, hold your tongue," as Job said to Magnus.[30]
A man may live a long time in this land before he discovers the existence of a young Switzerland free from the trammels of conservative liberalism (more conservative than liberal), and free from those of sectarian radicalism (preeminently sectarian). Both these trends are abundantly represented in the columns of the leading newspapers; the adherents of both are attached to the outworn political and social forms of the bourgeois regime which is declining from one end of Europe to the other.
I was surprised and delighted at what I read in the latest issues of the "Revue de la Société de Zofingue." I wish to make my French friends acquainted with what I have learned, so that sympathetic relationships may be established between them and young Switzerland.
The Zofingia Society is the leading society of Swiss students, and the oldest. It was founded in 1818, and will therefore celebrate its centenary next year. It comprises twelve sections: nine of these are "academic," viz. Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Berne, Basle, and Zurich; three are "gymnasial," viz. St. Gall, Lucerne, and Bellinzona.[31] The membership of the society is steadily increasing. In July, 1916, it was 575; but now, nearly a year later, it is 700. The organisation has a monthly review, "Centralblatt des Zofingervereins," issued in French, German, and Italian. This periodical is now in its fifty-seventh year. It publishes lectures, reports of discussions, and other matters of interest to the association.
The essential distinction between this body and the other societies of Swiss students is that the Zofingia, as explained in the first article of its constitution, "places itself above and outside all political parties, but takes its stand on democratic principles.... It abstains entirely from party politics." Thus, as its president writes, it affords to the students of Switzerland a permanent possibility of creating anew and ever anew their conception of "the true national spirit of Switzerland.... In it, each generation can freely think out for itself fresh ideals, can construct new forms of life. Thus the history of the Zofingerverein is something more than a history of a Swiss students' club; it is a miniature history of the moral and political evolution of Switzerland since 1815."—But it has always been in the vanguard.
This society, drawing its members from three races and nine cantons, exhibits, as may be imagined, multiplicity in unity. The "Centralblatt" for November, 1916, contains a report of the year 1915-16, compiled by Louis Micheli. It gives an account of the activities of the various sections, and skilfully indicates the peculiar characteristics of each section.