Switzerland Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAUSANNE.]

The Swiss are keen politicians and go industriously to the polls for the election of representatives, and for the settlement of the numerous questions referred to their decision by direct vote. In 1912 there was a Swiss referendum on the subject of the new Insurance law against sickness and accidents. Of the 839,114 electors 529,001 recorded their votes.

Switzerland each year attracts more and more the attention of sociologists. Its completely popular system of government, which has solved the problem of carrying on a democracy without extravagance and without bureaucratic inefficiency, its close and effective organisation of military, education, and charity matters, its methods of referring political issues for settlement directly to the people--all are being carefully studied in various countries of the world with a view to imitation. It yet remains to be seen whether methods and policies which work notably well in their native land would bear transplanting; whether, too, they would be as suitable for larger areas and larger populations than Switzerland has. In some respects the Swiss example will doubtless prove useful for imitation (with modifications) in other countries.

But it is fair to question whether the happiness to which the little Swiss people have reached is the ideal with which civilised democracy would be content. The Swiss are happy, but it is a strictly mediocre happiness. They are content because they have a very modest standard of contentment. The people of the country, with all their virtues, are not inspiring; and the life they lead suggests a little too much the life of an excellently-managed inst.i.tution to be really attractive. At the outset of this volume I ventured to question the justice of some eminent travellers who have abused the Swiss. They, it would seem to me, had formed an extraordinarily heroic idea of the Swiss character, and were disappointed that close examination showed a people who are very estimable, very well-educated, very firm in their patriotism, but not always suggestive of the heroic. Between an unfair depreciation and the idealising of the Swiss nation there is a reasonable middle ground, and from that middle ground the social and political inquirer should approach the study of Swiss sociological inst.i.tutions.