THE SWISS AND THEIR POLITICS 33
giving time and money and strength to the cause would spend that election day ? I asked Professor Wuarin squarely whether at such an election he and his friends would not single out voters whom they might reasonably hope to influence and try to per- suade them to vote their ticket. As I remember his reply ; it was : "No, we would not do that for fear of injuring our cause. It is assumed that before election day each voter has his mind made up. It is counted an impertinence to seek to disturb him or to change his conclusion. They seem to actually assume that the other fellow is also a patriot and should be left free to act upon his own convictions.
In my transcendental view of Switzerland I had the impression that democracy in that land was old, that it was somehow indig- enous to the soil and oozed out of the rocks. I have been led to make important modifications of that view. In some of the communes and cantons there exists that which is very old and which it is natural to describe as democratic. There were com- munal lands, communal pastures and forests. There were assem- blies of all the freemen to attend to matters of common con- cern. Certainly this fulfills the ordinary definition of democracy, yet it may fairly be doubted whether our concept of this ancient Alpine democracy is not entirely misleading. We unconsciously take into our definition of democracy the idea of conscious free social action. It may well be questioned whether these early moun- tain democrats were possessed of any such consciousness; whether they were not rather victims of democratic habits. By farming together, fighting together and herding together on equal terms they could live. By acting in any other way they would die. These regions at no time have been cursed with a surplus of the means of living. Their democratic ways and the so-called democratic virtues were the only obvious means of subsistence. All this, of course, is more theory. But there can be no doubt of the fact that when these same mountain Swiss were led to take a part in government outside of the ancient beaten track they manifested no special predilection for democracy. Govern- ment in the cantons drifted into the hands of the few. As early
