SWISS “EXPOSITION”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 58, Issue 4191, 31 May 1939, Page 4

SWISS “EXPOSITION”

ON ZURICH LAKESIDE. On either side of the Zurich Lake, beneath the glistening peaks of the Glarus Alps, there arises a stately city of the future. To the sound of hammering and clanging steel, skilled craft proud carpenters and engineers of many cantons are building up the Swiss National Exhibition. Every quarter century, the four million people of Switzerland make an “Exposition” to prove to the world that they are not merely yodellers and waiters, born to minister to tourists and winter sportsmen. Scotland staged the Empire Exhibition last year in order to show the Empire that she produces other things besides whisky, grouse and oatcakes and will no doubt sympathise with the little Swiss Republic. But whereas the Scottish Exhibition made no use of the Clyde, the Swiss one has recruited the beautiful blue Zurischsee to stage' a dream world of cubist palaces. On the left and right shores, bowered in public and private parks and gardens, the fifty or more pavilions spread themselves, some projecting over the water and set on sturdy sunken piles. How does the visitor proceed from

one side of the exhibition to the other? INGENIOUS AERIAL CABLE. A less ingenious nation would have been satisfied with motor boats, family steamers and bridge transport. Not so the Swiss. They have thrown an aerial cable across the lake, swinging its 3600 feet length from towers 235 feet high. Seated in two cabins forty passengers will shuttle across space in seven minutes, a new thrill devised for their especial benefit. How many people know that Swiss engineers have made the world’s largest powerful electric locomotive 1 — 12,000 h.p.? Its sleek shining shape will be on view at the exposition. Yet most people have never dreamed that Switzerland was a country of heavy industries. • What do they know of Switzerland who only its yodellers know? Catering for ski-ers, gaping tourists and mountain climbers does not make this green and pleasant land the prosperous, well behaved country it is. Money which the holiday makers and sportsmen bring in merely evens up. the balance between imports and exports. Only five per cent of the people work for “tourism.” Most of the Swiss workers are busily making, from raw

materials, high powered machines for the two hemispheres, precision instruments of marvellous complexity, quality chemical products, watches and clocks which defy competition, textiles renowned for their beauty and delicacy. That is the Switzerland which most people do not know. It is the Switzerland they will see at the exhibition. “.Playground of the world” is the usual name for this last free democracy in Central Europe. The Swiss have electrified their country by harnessing the waters of the Alps; they have bored wonderful tunnels through the mountains; they have set up a transport system which covers the remotest outposts of the heights. Greater than all this, they have perfected a political system which gives maximum liberty to every individual, parish, township and canton. There are 22 parliaments in Switzerland, one for each canton, all united in a Federal Government. Four languages are spoken: German, Italian, French and Romansch. Equality, liberty, fraternity. These are the keynotes of the Swiss National Exhibition, which is conceived not as a glorified trade counter but as a demonstration to our century of the awakened social conscience and the inventive fertility of to-day.