p. 12 | Switzerland by J. K. McLean

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 50.

Switzerland.

By J. K. McLean

CONSIDERED geographically, Switzerland is not a great country. It could be set down bodily inside the State of Pennsylvania, and leave an ample margin on every one of the four sides. In point of population it is scarcely to be ranked as a giant among the nations. The census of 1880 gave it but 2,846,102, which is less by some hundreds of thousands than the population of Ohio. All the same, however, Switzerland is and will remain to the end of time the most attractive, most picturesque, and most sought-out land in all the world. With her green robes, her ermine mantle, her lake jewels of opal and emerald, and her glistening diadem of ice, she stands queen of all lands. She is the chief shrine to which all lovers of beauty, of romance, and adventure will continually and unwearily resort. Two-thirds of the surface of Switzerland is occupied by rocks, lakes, glaciers, and eternal snow. A full sixth of what remains is covered by forest. At the same time she possesses some of the loveliest and most fertile valleys, some of the richest meadows and most productive hill-sides in all Europe.

Politically, Switzerland is the paradox of peoples. She is a republic of twenty-two separate and sovereign States, or cantons. These are so effectually separated from one another by high mountain ranges that one-half of the people are as strange to the other half as Australians are to Americans. Her people speak three different tongues—in Western Switzerland, the French; in Northern, the German; in Eastern and Southern, the Italian. Certainly not more than one Swiss in five, probably not more than one in ten, can converse with and be understood by all of his countrymen. There are many in every canton who have never so much as seen a man from half the other cantons. Thousands and thousands of the people have never looked outside of the mountain inclosure in which they were born. The other side of the steep incline on which they live is to them as thoroughly a terra incognita as is Patagonia or Alaska. More than this, the people are of different and antagonistic religions. Somewhat more than half are Protestants, the balance Romanists of the densest, darkest type. Among the latter are multitudes who can neither read nor write.

All the conditions of national unity and coherence are therefore most signally wanting. Specially lacking are the conditions commonly regarded as essential to the perpetuity of a republican form of government. Yet Switzerland is the oldest and most stable republic in history. She has just celebrated the five hundredth anniversary of the battle of Sempach, virtually the birth date of republicanism in modern history. How this little country, so situated, with such natural barriers of mountain, language, religion, and local interest existing between her several sections, has managed to hold together as against internal dissensions on one side, and on the other to keep from being swallowed up by the great powers which surround her, is the standing marvel of political history.—Rev. J. K. McLean, in Oakland Tribune.