The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 37 (Collected Works of Gk Chesterton) by Chesterton G.K
Author:Chesterton, G.K. [Chesterton, G.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586172763
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2012-08-21T04:00:00+00:00
October 5, 1935
The Spirit of Geneva
Statisticians may calculate, for I certainly decline to do so, how many thousand times contemporary printing presses have been printing the word âGeneva.â It would be safe to reckon that the overwhelming majority of allusions refer to it in only one limited, though somewhat alarming, sense. There may still be happy individuals for whom it still really means a place; a beautiful lake, a mountainous landscape, a locality with legends and types and a soul of its own. I should say that such eccentrics are now mostly to be found among the English; for though I cannot always join in the conventional chorus, now notably loud, that the English are always the wisest, freest, best-informed, most broad-minded, most just, dignified, and disinterested of all possible people on the earth, I do most seriously believe that they are almost the happiest. I like to think that there is somewhere a jolly English landscape-painter, to whom Geneva only means the Lake of Geneva. That other most noble national quality, the English sense of humour, has managed until quite lately to treat even political Geneva in its lighter aspect. Never shall I forget that perfect poem, in which Mr. E. V. Knox allowed his mind to wander from the problems of the League of Nations to a hazy computation of the amount of drink, food, furniture, and accommodation in Swiss hotels, that must have accompanied all the League deliberations. England should, at least, preserve the work of her humorists when she has so little to boast of in the way of politicians; and I, for one, have never forgotten the last verse of that poemâ
âO happy race, I sometimes think,
Which only stands and serves and waits
And feeds at each recurrent meal
These everlasting delegates!
We should have known when Peace was made,
But no one ever mentioned this,
That Reparations would be made
To almost no one but the Swiss.â
Since then storms have gathered over the mountains of Geneva, which make it difficult for even the Englishman to be frivolous. But I have no intention here of being, in the direct political sense, serious. This is no place for politics; and in any case not too many people seem to know what our politics are going to be. Therefore, I excuse myself here from discussing the future of Geneva, about which nobody knows anything; or even the present of Geneva, about which everybody excitedly asserts that he knows only too much. Taking the eccentric English privilege of the landscape-painter who regards Geneva as a lake, I propose to regard Geneva as a city, an ancient city which has played a very curious part in history; the capital of a canton that has a human significance of its own; and a long history of which the League of Nations is only the last chapter. Or, rather, it is the latest chapterâand by no means the last.
In a word, it is my English eccentricity and perversity to turn from the present of Geneva, which is
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