The Rotary Balita no. 684 (November 8, 1951)

At the conference of the 86th district (Switzerland) last May, the then district governor, Rotarian R. F. Rutsch of Berne gave a very unusual presentation on the development of Rotary. I know you will find it interesting and inspiring so I am giving you below a translation from the original German of excerpts from the address: If you will raise your glance to the roof of this stage you will be transported back to the year 1903. What a time that year recalls and what ephemeral magnificence this room focuses on the memory! On the boards of this stage the works of Ibsen, Schnitzler, Gerhart Hauptmann and Strindberg were performed. The quiet of Berne was now and then disturbed by the noise of an automobile rushing through the streets at 30 kilometers an hour! Strangely enough, in the just opened buildings of the University, the lecture halls were full to overflowing with foreign-looking Russian students devoted to lively discussion. In the literary salons people were enthused about 'Jugendstil' and there was discussion about Zola, d'Annunzio, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Key, and Hackel's 'Welstratsel.' Graf Zeppelin had just undertaken his first attempt at flight in a dirigible. All was well with Kings and Emperors of our neighboring states. Wilhelm II-with mustache always highly twisted-is today at a naval review in Kiel and tomorrow in Rome, in the presence of King Vittorio Emmanuel, giving an address in which there is much talk about God. The worthy old Franz Josef has had a meeting with Czar Nicholas in Vienna because the Macedonians, the Magyars and the Serbs are giving him trouble, and Edward VII travelled to a highly official reception in Paris, where formerly he loved to travel unofficially whenever the tight reins which the old Queen Victoria held on him slackened a little. It was a glorious time. America lay far away. For Europeans the wild west began in New York. Nobody was much interested when President Theodore Roosevelt began to worry about the increasing power of the Morgan, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Trusts! If anyone had said that an idea of an unknown Chicago lawyer would one day bring together in this room men and women from all over Switzerland, people would have laughed in his face. But was it really such a glorious time, that turn-of-the-century? Was it not rather a dream world which carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction? The ruined houses of the brave Boers who had been defeated by General Kitchener still smoldered in South Africa. Soon the first shots of the Russo-Japanese war would be fired. Had not Empress Elizabeth in Geneva, King Umberto in Italy, and King Alexander in Serbia already fallen victims to conscienceless murderers? In Russia the workers had split into two parties which called themselves Menshevicks and Bolshevicks, and in this very year of 1903 the Labor Party of England was founded. In the colonial empires a feverish tension reigned. All of the conflicts which had former ly been confined to Europe now spread them selves gradually throughout the entire earth. Behind a magnificent false facade great spiritual tensions developed and grew larger, manifesting themselves in ever more reckless balances of power, criss-crossing through the politics of European states and appearing in ever more remote regions of our world. Such was the spiritual, business and political constellation under which Rotary was called into life. It would be false to claim that Paul Harris took his step because of a clear recognition of these circumstances and the dangers inherent in them. But he and the men who supported him in his aspirations must certainly have notized them. That reckless selfishness so characteristic of business life and of politics would now be challenged by the concept of mutual trust and by the principle of service. This movement was to be begun not by nations but by individuals-by men who, thanks to their places in commerce, the professions and in political life, could influence national behaviour, and even as the formerly self-sufficient continents were coming together in a narrower community, so must such a movement claim all civilized people. That was the situation half a century ago. Where do we stand today? Thrones and their pomp have been discarded, mighty colonial empires have been dissolved, and the thousand year Reich of the corporal from the Austrian Brannau has been swept away like dust. For they all-monarchies and dictatorships alike-transgressed an iron law - the law which decrees that naked force shall - not endure forever. Today the people of the earth are split into two camps between which it seems almost impossible to build a bridge. We know, though, that the ruthless might which today subdues the peoples of the eastern hemisphere must also pass away. Naked force can never really last. In the phalanx against abuse of power, deprivation of human rights, and the non-recognition of human dignity, Rotary modestly stands. What would the dictators in Berlin and Rome have said if someone had prophesied to them that the work of humble and obscure Paul Harris would continue without interruption even when their empires had long since dissolved? For Rotary has spread itself over the entire civilized world and had rallied hundreds of thousands to its support. Because the idea of Paul Harris attempts to substitute service for power, friendliness for hate, understanding and good-will for recklessness in business and political life, it will live much longer than the regimes of despots and of dictators. As long as we endeavour with all our strength to press ever onward toward our goals, as long as we do not exhaust ourselves in an empty chase after a super-organization, as long as we avoid glutted self-satisfaction, forgetting neither our ideals nor the necessity of doing battle for them, just so long need we have no fear for the fate of Rotary.