The Aberdeen weekly., 1919-06-27

The Rome of the Caesars
and of tine POpes, which held
pre-eminence in this respect for many
ages. now yields to Geneva. which,
since John Calvin's time. has been cali
ed 'the Protestant Rome" writes Irv-
ing II. 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 cen
tury, when, under the Quasi-dictatOr-
ship of James Fazy, the radicals of
the Swiss canton Geneva spent money
with almost reckless extravaganza to
develop and modernize the city, de la
Rive, Il 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 1t Is there
that the parliament of nations will hold
its sessions and the roads from all
tnuS Oh edTtn Will IOcuS IneTe.
The census of 1911 gave Geneva In
the neighborhood of 10000 inhabl-
tants, divided almost evenly between
Protestants and Catholics. In point of
languages the French preponderared
nearly seven to one as compared with
German.
On Beautiful Lake Leman.
The city is the southwesternmost
point of Switzerland. 1t is on the pic
turesque Lake Leman (called also Lake
Geneva), and is divided into halves,
the old and the new towns, by the
River Rhone The number seven fig
ures 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. 1t was lit
tie more than q village of the AllO-
broges a Gallo tribe, when Rome was
mistress of the world. julius Caesar
took his stand there when he heard
that the Helvetians (the Swiss of to-
day) 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 Caesars
watchword And twO-thirds of the
Helvetian people perished in a futile
attempt to force their passage through
the Roman provinces. 1t was the be-
ginning of the Gallo war. which lasted
nine years and became the fulcrum by
which Caesar raised himself to the po-
sition 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 1t is no small COIN
cidence that the city Of his birth should
have been chosen as the capital of a
league of nations OF democratized
world For to no other one man does
democracy owe a greater debt than to
Rousseau. His pen was the fail
which first set thrones e-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 al
most the entire theme of the third
canto of his magnificent "Childe
Harold"
The same great poet has also cele-
brated the misfortunes of another Gen.
evan in the well-known poem Of 1.-The
Prisoner of Chillon."
Chllon is castle on top of crag
which rises perpendicularly nearly l.
OOC feet above Lake Leman. Here,
early in the fifteenth century, Francois