Journal de Genève
- Responsibilities
- Births, Marriages, Deaths
- The Third Rome
The Journal de Genève of 30 September 1926 combined a front-page editorial, a statistics column and a report from Rome. In the editorial, "W. M." argued that Germany's repeated attempts to reopen the war-guilt question under Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty were futile and ill-timed. In his view, reconciliation with France depended on forgetting, but he also held that Germany's ultimatum to Russia of 31 July 1914 made the German government objectively responsible. A column signed "J. M." used the new Swiss Statistical Yearbook to trace the country's population from 2.68 million in 1871 to nearly 3.94 million in 1925. It stressed that births had fallen even while the surplus of births over deaths grew. The paper's Rome correspondent quoted Mussolini's charge to Governor Cremonesi to build a monumental "Third Rome". He described the demolitions around the Theatre of Marcellus and the Argentina area before turning to the plan to clear the Capitoline hill.
Translation
Responsibilities
The Germans show a singular tenacity in bringing the question of responsibility for the war back onto the table. For a long time now nobody in France would speak of it any more — at least officially — and Article 231 would be the most forgotten article of the Treaty of Versailles if the Germans themselves did not constantly insist on discussing this subject, which ought to be unpleasant for them. There is a certain pride in this attitude. The summary condemnation contained in the peace treaty would weigh less on the mind of the German people if they were as detached from international morality as their enemies claim. The effort the Germans are making to justify themselves retrospectively in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world is, on their part, a tribute to virtue and the sign of a troubled conscience perhaps deeper than they themselves believe. But this discussion seems to us both futile and ill-timed. Ill-timed, because [?] a rapprochement between the two peoples will be achieved only on the basis of forgetting. Futile, because people are arguing over words and will never be able either to agree or to convince one another. The objective responsibility of the German government for the declaration of war seems to us established beyond all discussion. If Germany had not sent an ultimatum to Russia on 31 July 1914, the possibility of saving the peace still remained. The government that put an end to the negotiations is obviously responsible for the consequences of its act. For had it not committed that act, either the war would not have taken place, or someone else would have borne the responsibility for it. This is not a complicated historical problem; it is a question of common sense. But we must go one step further. What did the German government want when it took the fatal decision? Was it moved by a desire for conquest? The truth is psychological —
Births, Marriages, Deaths
The Statistical Yearbook of Switzerland has broken new ground in its latest volume, covering the year 1925: it has condensed the information on foreign trade, railways and subsidies, which has already appeared in special publications of the Statistical Bureau. On the other hand, a few tables give an evocative digest of the life of our nation since 1871, and there is matter for much reflection in reading these figures. Judge for yourself. In 1871 Switzerland had 2,679,409 inhabitants. Growth was regular and constant until 1914 (3,897,294); then, because of the war, there was a slight decline (3,869,160 in 1919); finally the upward movement resumed, reaching in 1925 the figure of 3,936,330. Our country is approaching four million. This increase comes partly from the excess of births over deaths and partly from immigration; in other years, by contrast, the excess of births is partly offset by emigration. On this point let us take the extreme dates and figures. In 1871 the excess of births was 3,631; in 1925 it was 24,659. Only once was there an excess of deaths: 2,376 in 1918. In each of the other 54 years there was an excess of births: at the minimum 3,631 in 1871, at the maximum 38,779 in 1902. This result is not due to an increase in the number of births — we leave stillbirths aside — which, on the contrary, fell from 77,633 to 72,570 between the first and last years considered, despite the growth of the population. The minimum was recorded in 1917 (72,065) and the maximum in 1901 (97,028).
The Third Rome
Rome, September. (From our correspondent) "Within five years, Rome must appear marvellous in the eyes of the whole world: vast, orderly, powerful, as it was in the time of the First Empire of Augustus." So spoke Benito Mussolini on 31 December last when, at the Capitol, in the Hall of the Horatii and Curiatii, he installed Senator Cremonesi, the first governor of Rome. After recalling the works already carried out in recent years, the head of the Fascist government added: "You will continue to prune, to free the trunk of the great oak from everything that still stunts it. You will make room around the Augusteum, the Theatre of Marcellus, the Capitol, the Pantheon. Everything that grew up around them during the centuries of decadence must disappear... You will likewise free the majestic temples of Christian Rome from parasitic and profane constructions; the thousand-year-old monuments of our history must rise like giants in the necessary solitude. Then the Third Rome will spread over other hills, along the banks of the sacred river as far as the beaches of the Tyrrhenian. You will remove from the monumental streets of Rome the senseless contamination of the tramways, and you will give the most modern means of communication to the new cities that will arise, in a ring, around the ancient one; and a straight road, which must be the longest and widest in the world, will carry the breath of the Mare Nostrum from resurrected Ostia to the heart of the City where the Unknown Soldier keeps watch... My ideas are clear; my orders are precise!" Strong in the government's support and furnished with its instructions, Senator Cremonesi undertook the execution of this gigantic work without losing an instant. From the first days of January, the labourers' pickaxes attacked the condemned quarters, and around the Marcello and Argentina theatres numerous shops at once announced on large placards: "Closing-down sale due to demolition." Since then the work has continued with vigour and method. It is time to form an idea of it and to contemplate its relatively imminent results. For who does not take an interest in the transformation — or, to use the established Italian expression, the sistematisazione — of the Eternal City? Such a subject, however, does not fit within the limits of one article. Only the project for freeing the Capitoline hill will occupy us today.
Context
Why Germany kept reopening Article 231
The editorial complains that Germany, not France, keeps the war-guilt debate alive, and it treats that debate as an obstacle to Franco-German rapprochement. The underlying stakes were concrete. Article 231 opened the reparations section of the Versailles Treaty. German politicians openly campaigned against it to win international sympathy, and the German government funded a Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War. The strategy rested on a legal chain: if German guilt could be disproved, the legal obligation to pay reparations would disappear. This offers a more material explanation for the tenacity that "W. M." attributed to pride and a troubled conscience. For Berlin, rewriting the history of 1914 was also a way to undermine the reparations obligation and, beyond it, the treaty settlement of 1919. The editorialist's call for "forgetting" would in practice have left that settlement untouched.
What Article 231 said, and how it was read in 1926
Within the extract the editorial speaks of the treaty's "summary condemnation" of Germany. It rests German responsibility not on the treaty's wording but on events. It argues that Germany's ultimatum to Russia of 31 July 1914 settled that responsibility "beyond all discussion". The clause itself did not use the word guilt. Its function was to provide the legal basis for reparations. In the same year as this editorial, the Stanford scholars Robert C. Binkley and A. C. Mahr argued that German accusations that the article assigned war guilt were ill-founded. In their reading it was more an assumption of liability to pay damages than an admission of war guilt. So in 1926 two questions were in play. One was the historical question of who had broken off the peace in 1914, which the editorial takes up. The other was the legal question of what Article 231 actually meant, which was itself contested.
The foreign workers behind Switzerland's migration swings
"J. M." divides Swiss population growth since 1871 into natural increase and migration. The yearbook figures he quotes show growth to 1914, a dip by 1919 and then recovery. The migration side of that story was large. Industrialisation and free movement with neighbouring countries raised the number of resident foreigners from 211,000 in 1880 (7.5% of the population) to 552,000 in 1910 (14.7%). During the war years foreign residents left on balance, and their share fell to 10.4% by 1920. By the column's own figures, births exceeded deaths in every year except 1918. The fall of some 28,000 inhabitants between 1914 and 1919 must therefore have come from net departures. In those years migration did more than offset part of the birth surplus, as the columnist puts it. It outweighed that surplus entirely.
Filippo Cremonesi and the new Governorate of Rome
The correspondent presents Cremonesi as Mussolini's executor, installed as "first governor of Rome". The office was new. A royal decree-law of 28 October 1925 turned Rome's commissarial administration into the Governorate, ending elected municipal government, and Cremonesi was appointed its first governor. The speech quoted by the paper matches Mussolini's address at Cremonesi's appointment ceremony. The paper's quotation leaves some lines out behind its ellipses, including the promise that within five years the Pantheon would be visible from Piazza Colonna through a great opening. The energetic picture in this September 1926 report did not last. Barely a year after his appointment Cremonesi resigned. One account links this to finances: because the state's commitments were never fixed, the city could not carry out the great works Mussolini demanded.
Older plans behind the Fascist clearances
Mussolini's speech demands that everything that grew up around the monuments during "the centuries of decadence" disappear, but much of the programme reworked older plans. Rome's regulatory plans of 1873, 1883 and 1909 had already foreseen a road between Piazza Venezia and the Colosseum. Cremonesi sat on the commission revising the 1909 master plan, which ended with the "Variante generale" of 1926. In that context the first demolitions began in the Forum area to expose the remains of Trajan's Markets and the imperial fora, and the Torre Argentina area was enlarged. This is the Argentina district where, according to the correspondent, shops were advertising closing-down sales. The demolitions had a human cost that the extract does not mention. From 1924 the first borgata, at Acilia, housed people evicted from the area of the fora of Caesar and Trajan. The road finally built between 1924 and 1932 cost the homes of 746 of Rome's poorest families, who were moved to the outskirts.
Original
Les responsabilités
Les respon Les Allemands mettent une singulière ténacité à ramener sur le tapis la question des responsabilités de la guerre. Il y a bien longtemps que personne n'en parlerait plus - du moins officiellement - en France et l'article 231 serait le plus oublié du traité de Versailles si les Allemands eux-mêmes n'insistaient constamment pour discuter ce sujet, qui devrait leur être désagréable. Il y a dans cette attitude une certaine fierté. La condamnation sommaire contenue dans le traité de paix pèserait moins sur l'esprit du peuple allemand s'il était aussi détaché que le prétendent ses ennemis de la morale internationale. L'effort que font les Allemands pour se justifier rétrospectivement à leurs propres yeux et aux yeux du monde est, de leur part, un hommage à la vertu et le signe d'un trouble de conscience peut-être plus profond qu'ils ne le croient eux-mêmes. Mais cette discussion nous paraît à la fois vaine et inopportune. Inopportune, parce qu'on [?] ne réalisera un rapprochement entre les deux peuples que sur la base de l'oubli. Vaine parce qu'on discute sur des mots et que l'on ne pourra jamais ni s'entendre, ni se convaincre. La responsabilité objective du gouvernement allemand dans la déclaration de guerre, nous paraît établie au-dessus de toute discussion. Si l'Allemagne n'avait pas envoyé un ultimatum à la Russie, le 31 juillet 1914, la possibilité de sauver la paix subsistait. Le gouvernement qui a mis fin aux négociations est évidemment. responsable des conséquences de son acte. Car s'il ne l'avait pas commis, ou la guerre n'aurait pas eu lieu, ou un autre en aurait pris la responsabilité. Ce n'est pas là un problème historique compliqué, c'est une question de bon sens. Mais il faut faire un pas de plus. Qu'a voulu le gouvernement allemand, lorsqu'il a pris la décision fatale? A-t-il été mû par un désir de conquête? La vérité est psychologique -
Naissances, mariages, morts
Naissances, mariages, morts L'Annuaire statistique de la Suisse a innové dans son dernier volume, relatif à l'année 1925: il a condensé les renseignements concernant le commerce extérieur, les chemins de fer et les subventions, qui ont déjà paru dans des publications spéciales du Bureau de statistique. En revanche, quelques tableaux donnent un raccourci évocateur de la vie de notre nation depuis 1871: et il y a matière à beaucoup de réflexions à la lecture de ces chiffres. Qu'on en juge plutôt. En 1871, la Suisse comptait 2. 679. 409 habitants. La progression a été régulière et constante jusqu'en 1914 (3. 897. 294); puis il y eut, à cause de la guerre, une légère régression (3. 869. 160 en 1919); enfin reprise du mouvement ascendant, qui aboutit en 1925 au chiffre de 3. 936. 330. Notre pays approche des quatre millions. Cet accroissement provient partie d'excédent des naissances sur les morts, partie d'immigration; en d'autres années, l'excédent des naissances est au contraire compensé en partie par l'émigration. Prenons à ce sujet les dates et les chiffres extrêmes. En 1871, l'excédent des naissances était de 3. 631; en 1925, il a été de 24. 659. Une seule fois il y eut excédent de décès: 2. 376 en 1918. Au cours des 54 autres années, il y eut excédent de naissances: au minimum de 3. 631 en 1871, au maximum de 38. 779 en 1902. Ce résultat n'est pas dû à une augmentation du nombre des naissances - nous laissons de côté les morts-nés - qui, de la première à la dernière année envisagées, a au contraire diminué de 77. 633 à 72. 570, malgré l'augmentation de la population. Le minimum a été constaté en 1917 (72. 065) et le maximum en 1901 (97. 028).
La troisième Rome
Rome, septembre. (De notre correspondant) «Avant cinq ans, Rome doit apparaître merveilleuse aux yeux du monde entier: vaste, ordonnée, puissante, comme elle le fut au temps du Premier Empire d'Auguste.» Ainsi parla Benito Mussolini. le 31 décembre dernier, alors qu'au Capitole, dans la salle des Horaces et des Curiaces. il installait le sénateur Cremonesi, premier gouverneur de Rome, Après avoir rappelé les travaux déjà exécutés au cours des dernières années,. le chef du gouvernement fasciste ajouta: Vous continuerez à élaguer, à libérer le tronc du grand chêne de tout ce qui l'étiole encore. Vous donnerez de l'espace à l'Augusteum, au Théâtre Marcello, au Capitole, au Panthéon. Tout ce qui crût autour d'eux pendant les siècles de la décadence doit disparaître... Vous libérerez également des constructions parasitaires et profanes les temples majestueux de la Rome chrétienne; les monuments millénaires de notre histoire doivent s'élever comme des géants dans la solitude nécessaire. Ensuite, la troisième Rome s'étendra sur d'autres collines, le long des rives du fleuve sacré jusqu'aux plages de la Tyrrhénienne. Vous éliminerez des rues monumentales de Rome l'insensée contamination des tramways, et vous donnerez les moyens de communication les plus modernes aux nouvelles villes qui surgiront, en anneau, autour de l'antique, et un rectiligne, qui devra être le plus long et le plus large du monde, apportera le souffle du Mare Nostrum. de Ostie ressuscitée jusqu'au cœur de la Ville où veille l'Inconnu... Mes idées sont claires; mes ordres sont précis! Fort de l'appui du gouvernement et muni de ses instructions, le sénateur Cremonesi entreprit, sans perdre un instant, l'exécution de cette œuvre gigantesque. Dès. les premiers jours de janvier, les pioches des terrassiers s'attaquèrent aux quartiers condamnés et, aux environs des théâtres Marcello et Argentina, de nombreuses boutiques annoncèrent aussitôt par de grandes pancartes: «Liquidation pour cause de démolition.» Depuis lors le travail se poursuit avec vigueur et avec méthode. Il est temps de s'en faire une idée et d'en contempler les résultats relativement prochains. Car, qui ne prend pas intérêt à la transformation ou - pour employer l'expression italienne consacrée - à la sistematisazione de la Ville éternelle? Un pareil sujet ne rentre toutefois pas dans le cadre d'un article. Seul le projet de la libération de la colline du Capitole nous retiendra aujourd'hui.