THE SPIRIT OF GENEVA
By Robert de Traz
Geneva, for the unhistorical or short-memoried, is the City of the League of Nations. M. de Traz, in- his quite admirable little book The Spirit of Geneva (Milford, 6s.), unusually well translated from the French by Miss Fried-Ann Kindler, supplies a very necessary reminder of what Geneva was for eighteen centuries or more before the League was thought of. Caesar crossed the Rhone there, and from that moment Geneva has lived in history. It has been' at once a city of refuge and a -meeting-place of nations, both functions which prepared it well for the reception of Sir Eric Drummond and his staff fifteen years and more ago. M. de Traz writes sensibly and attractively about the League of Nations, but the League has been written about often enough before. The first thirty pages of his book, devoted to Geneva in history, are worth more than all the rest,- for what might -well have been a mere catalogue of famous names becomes in M. de Traz's hands a procession skilfully marshalled, with every figure counting for something and with a distinctive part assigned to him. Calvin is there, of course (but not Servetus), Rousseau and Voltaire, Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, Byron and Shelley, Guizot and Lamartine, Mazzini and the refugee Mussolini. Geneva deserves celebration, and in M. de Traz she has found a worthy and competent celebrant
Previous page
