A Journey of a Jayhawker

by W. Y. Morgan

After the Tell revolution, which was in the thirteenth century, those Swiss cantons never lost their freedom, although they had to fight for it about every generation. The Hapsburg family, which reigned in Austria, was always trying to conquer the Swiss, and although its power was great enough to overcome any army they could collect, it could not cope with the mountains and gulches in which the Swiss were at home, and where one man who knew the land was equal in fighting value to a dozen knights in armor or on horseback. On that account the Swiss, especially the people of these “forest cantons,” have been a free people through all the changes in the world during more than 500 years. Sometimes they have been selfish and narrow in their ideas of freedom, considering that they were the only people on earth, and they have until the last century held serfs and domineered despotically over weak neighbors. But they were always far in advance of the rest of the world in their ideas of personal liberty. Switzerland is the one country which has always been a refuge to exiled patriots, rebels, conspirators and pretenders. Switzerland will not surrender a fugitive from another country on a political charge. The judges who sentenced Charles I. of England to death sought refuge in Switzerland when Charles II. came to the throne. Charles demanded that the judges be given up to him, and brought every influence to bear, but the Swiss stood by their law of refuge. To-day the anarchists and nihilists of Russia and the revolutionists of every country from Roumania to Spain have their headquarters in Geneva or some other Swiss town.

It will be noticed that I think a good deal of the Swiss, and that I have written some criticism of the Italians. I went through Italy without ever being overcharged, “held up,” or worked by cab-drivers, hotel-keepers, or anyone at all. But in Switzerland, the land of freedom and education, I have had all these things done to me. I have been surprised and pleased by the way the people of Europe treat strangers, even if they do want tips. I had not been meanly treated from the time I left Boston until I reached Switzerland. The last man I did business with in my native land was a Boston hackman, who charged me twice what he should when he brought us to the ship. I did not meet his equal until I got to Lucerne. I hope there is no connection between personal liberty, republican government, and the swindling of strangers.

Yesterday we went to St. Gallen, a little industrial town near Constance. The women will recognize the name of this town if the men do not, for it is the place Swiss embroideries come from. I found out one thing there: Most of the Swiss hand embroidery is made by machinery. The Swiss are called the Yankees of Europe. They are up to almost all the tricks of the trade. They are changing from a pastoral and agricultural people, except right in the mountains, and are making money out of manufactories and tourists. The men and women do not wear the ridiculous and charming peasant costumes, except in beer-gardens and summer-resort hotels. In fact, I am impressed with the sameness of people’s clothes everywhere. There is no longer any such thing as characteristic costume. I saw the men’s clothes in Italy all cut and made just as in France, England, or America. The women have the same styles in the country districts of Switzerland that they do in Kansas or in Paris. Of course some people know how to wear their clothes better than others, and there is a difference in fit and make, but the styles are the same from Hutchinson to St. Gallen.

I am learning some things in geography. Mont Blanc, the biggest mountain in Switzerland, is in France. Constance, one of the best Swiss resorts, is in Germany. Switzerland is such a busy little country that it bulges out all around.

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 constitutions and 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.