Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/44

 30 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

There was a bit of fireworks at the end, in which a star and the date of the new year shone out in brilliant colors. The three days of festivity at the beginning of the year are given over to sports and traffic kept up during all the hours of night and day.

One other significant festival was observed through all Switz- erland. On the iithof January teachers and pupils united in doing honor to their distinguished leader, Pestalozzi, on the occasion of his 1 5<Dth birthday. It was Pestalozzi who taught the art of making play a serious business. The Swiss were the first subjects of his instruction and they seem to have caught the point a little in advance of the rest of the world.

I was told more than once not to go to Geneva to learn the spirit of the Swiss, that Geneva is more French than Swiss, that the Genevese were wanting in loyalty to the Swiss nation. Speaking simply from my own impressions I should say that if this is true of the Genevese the loyalty of the other cantons must be something terrific.

Another thing that interested me very much in Geneva and so far as I could learn this is characteristic throughout Swit- zerland was the marked respect shown for the private opinion of the individual voter. During my first two Sundays in Geneva I attended important elections. The first was on the Referendum to accept or reject an act of the national legislature reor- ganizing the military forces in the direction of greater cen- tralization. The second was a triennial election to choose a central legislature. I had learned from the local papers that in the case of both of these elections there was unusual public interest. I had also attended elections in England and America. On election day both in England and America we expect every citizen to do his duty, and we mean as one part of that duty not only that he should vote early but that he should spend the rest of the day in the effort to induce his friends to vote, and to vote the right ticket. We mention with special honor the names of our conservative ministers of the gospel who thus attend to the duties of election day. When I entered the large hall which contained the Genevese voters, I expected