Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 156, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1919 — Capital of League of Nations [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Capital of League of Nations

ALL roads henceforth lead to Geneva. The Rome of Ihe Caesars and of the Popes, which held pre-eminence in this respect for many ages, fields' to veneta, yt’hltfh, since John Calvin’s time, has been called “the Protestant Rome,” writes lining R. Bacon in the Detroit Free Press. Geneva is to be the capital of the league of nations, which is but another way of saying the capital of the world. Thus the peace conference at Paris has decided. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when, under the qiiasi-dictator-ship of James Fazy, the radicals of, the Swiss canton Geneva spent money with almost reckless extravagance to develop and modernize the eify, de la Rive, a conservative, exclaimed: “They want to make Geneva the smallest of the great cities; oh, that they would only allow her to remain the greatest of the small cities!” And now, seventy years after he expressed this wish, it is about to be realized; for from now on it is there that the parliament of nations will hold Its sessions and the roads from all ends of earth will focus there. The census of 1911 gave Geneva in the neighborhood of 150,000 inhabitants, divided almost evenly between Protestants and Catholics. In point of languages the French preponderated nearly seven to one as compared with German. On Beautiful .Lake Leman. The city is the southwestemmost point of Switzerland. It Is on the picturesque Lake Leman (called also Lake Geneva), and is divided Into halves, ( the old and the new towns, by the River Rhone. The number seven figures geographically in Geneva as It does in Rome. The latter city has seven hills; Geneva, seven bridges. Geneva, however, is of but recent date compared with Rome. It was little more than a village of the Allobroges, a Gallic tribe, when Rome was mistress of the Julius Caesar took his stand there when he heard that the Helvetians (the Swiss of today) had decided to emigrate from their own country, which they had come to consider as too cramping for their national growth. “They shall not pass,” was Caesar’s watchword. And two-thirds of the Helvetian people perished In d futile attempt to force their passage through the Roman’provinces. It was the beginning of the Gallic war, which lasted nine years' and became the fulcrum by which Caesar raised himself to the position of dictator of virtually the whole civilized world. Birthplace of Rousseau. Few cities have produced so many Illustrious sons or been the arena for the activity’ of so many great men as Geneva. Jean Jacques Rousseau was born there. And it Is no small coincidence that the city of his birth should have been chosen as the capital of a league of nations of a democratized world. For to no other one man does democracy owe a greater debt than to Rousseau. His pen was the flail which first set thrones a-tottering. Kingcraft began to decay beneath the corroding assaults of reason which he leveled at the “divine rights” upon which royal prerogatives were based. Lord Byron’S noble tribute to both Geneva and Rousseau constitutes almost thti entire theme of the third canto of his magnificent “Childe Harold.” The same great poet has also, celebrated the misfortunes of anothe? Genevan In the well-known poem of “The Prisoner of Chilion.” x Chlllon is a castle on top of a crag which rises perpendicularly nearly 1,000 feet above Lake Laman. Here, early in the fifteenth century, Francois de Bonnivard, prior of St Victor, was Imprisoned. Where Calvin Ruled. In 1532 William Favell, a Protestant preacher from Dauphine, who had just won Vaud, a Swiss canton, to Protestantism, made his appearance at Geneva. His success was so considerable that be established his home there and, in the following year, Geneva entered into closer religious relations with the Swiss City of Berne, which had embraced Protestantism. Fribourg, .which remained ioyjfl to Its old faith, Withdrew from the alliance with

Geneva. On August 10, 1535, Geneva formally adopted Protestanism. A year later, John Calvin, a refugee from France, stopped at Geneva, intending to remain there only one night. FnveT in(iucedhim to protract his visit; In 1538 the opposition succeeded in having Favel and Calvin expelled; but, although Favel never returned, Calvin went back in 1541, and gained such an ascendancy that he was soon enabled to set up a theocratic form of government, with himself sat the head. He was, at that time, in his thirty-second year. The site of Calvin’s house, at Geneva, Is at No. 13 Grand Rue. That of Rousseau, which still stands, is at No. 40, the same street. After the French revolution the city was the capital of a French department, but in 1814 it became the twentysecond canton of the Swiss confederation. Since that time the history of Geneva, as regards its foreign policy, has been Identical with that of the confederation.

Geneva and the New Bridge.