One of my interests is family history. Every so often I come across a gem that I feel should be shared more widely and this is one of those moments.
During my research I have had the opportunity to read a newspaper report of a municipal conference in Paris involving 115 civic dignitaries from the cities of Amsterdam, Brussels, Ghent, Liege, The Hague, London, Madrid, Moscow, St Petersburg, and Westminster. One of those attending representing the City of Westminster was then Alderman Robert Woolley Walden my first cousin three times removed.
The report in the
Shoreditch Observer of Saturday 6 June 1914 includes the bold headline "Plea for an Inter-Communal Parliament". Intrigued, I read the report in greater detail and in it there includes a most inspirational speech by
M.
Chassaigne-Goyon, President of the Paris Municipal Council which I want to share in full:-
“It is to England, to London, that I address my first
welcome, to your admirable City which was praised by Tacitus, and the municipal
organisation of which goes back to the days of the Magna Charta. There is
nothing equal to the majesty of London, where each monument, each tomb, each
stone brings to us a great and virile lesson in patriotism and national
continuity, as well as the charm and beauty set in relief by their contrasts.
What a prodigious animation, what unrivalled activity in the City, in those immense
docks, those world-famed warehouses, which it would be necessary to have
visited in order to understand your national character, compounded of
concentrated energy, reflective will-power, and methodical and conscientious
heroism.
What delicious freshness, what an impression of calm
satisfaction are on the other hand evoked by your parks, the luxuriant
vegetation of which creates the illusion of being far away in the country. What
sweetness and grace are to be found in these homes, where you shelter your family
virtues, and of which we were privileged in 1905 to taste the charm and
delicious intimacy, a truly ideal framework for this British, reserve, hiding
such cultivated minds, and such fine and delicate sentiments. What poetry in
this incomparable view over the Thames, which your gentle sunlight plays,
delicately shadowed by grey smoke tempered with white puffs of steam, which
like a gauze veil, painted with gold, envelopes those Gothic monuments of
Westminster, true marvels of architecture, those palaces of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, where we have had the honour of being received by you. We
shall ever have present in our minds the splendour of that festival at the
Guildhall, where all your nobility of blood, heart, and intelligence gave such
a beautiful tribute of honour to our respected President of the Republic, who,
in your eyes, embodied France.
My discourse would be but a repetition if I wished to set
forth all the beauties of the cities where so generous and luxurious a
hospitality has been offered to us. Our close proximity has permitted us
repeatedly to accept the kind invitations of Belgian municipalities. The
reception by your capital and your great cities, gentlemen, was a genuine
competition in attentions in an atmosphere of charm and elegance.
Brussels,
with her aristocratic thoroughfares, has preserved the centre of so modern a
city that marvellous group of ancient architecture, bearing witness to the
heroism of your ancestors, which makes the square of your Hotel de Ville an unrivalled
museum in stone. Nothing is more flattering to us than to hear your capital
described as a second Paris. “Can Antwerp not attribute to herself what Taine
said of Rubens: ' He enjoyed creating worlds!' Is not your enormous port and
your prosperous city so rich in artistic treasures, a very world?
In the picturesque Walloon country of proverbial activity,
Liege rises up, industrious, smart and proud upon the smiling banks of the
Meuse. The warm sympathy you showed us there four years ago will remain among
our most pleasant recollections. It seems like yesterday to me that we were
received at Ghent with such friendly courtesy, where the splendours of
horticultural exhibitions were side by side with your incomparable exhibitions
of Flemish art, your belfry which rang out the freedom of the communes, and the
feudal monuments of your “prodigious city as Albert Durer called it.
Is not the vessel which figures in the coat-of arms of the
City Paris the living symbol of the warm sympathy uniting our capital to that
of Denmark? Between the shores of the blue watered Sound, as on our river, the
picturesque prow the valorous Vikings floats gaily, proudly ' over the swan's
road.’
It would need the riches of the Castillian tongue to
describe the reception given us by Madrid, where we spent some fairy-like hours
last autumn. The renowned and chivalric courtesy of that glorious nation was a
powerful fairy, foreseeing wishes, outstripping desire. Better than the
flowers, even, were the radiant Spanish girls, adding beauty to the gate of
Toledo; the ancient stones were enlivened by their youth, their grace and the
pearl of Spain ornamented these monuments of antiquity with a living smile. For
a moment I coveted the riches of Calderon’s language. ' It would need Eastern
poetry as well to praise sparkling Andalusia.
Are not the beautiful flowing waters also one of the
most beautiful ornaments of The Hague, where they wind gracefully through the
eternal verdure of their flowery banks? In your City, royal, wealthy,
distinguished, beautiful, enframed by a forest which seems to bring a fresh
dowry of coolness each morning, the mirror of the Vyver reflects the
Mauritshuis and the Binnenhof, whence the mighty souvenirs of your history live
over again, beside the immortal works of your masters. What a sublime page you
would add to this history, if in the splendid Palace of Peace, inaugurated last
year, you should succeed in erecting dyke against war?
A dyke, is not that the very heart of Amsterdam? proud city
rising like Venus out of the waters, city of refuge open all the proscribed,
immutably true to its traditions, impassioned for independence, whose museums
with their eternal masterpieces, the canals with their pure waters beautifully
shaded, the vast harbour, where giant steamers, dainty sailing ships, and heavy
caravels but lately left an indelible impression upon us.
On the delta of the Neva, where the majestic river becomes a
branch of the sea, there is St. Petersburg, a centre of intellectual, economic
and political life ; a city hospitable beyond any. The noble regularity of its
views, brightened by the bright colours of the houses, surmounted by the gilded
cupolas of your cathedrals, and the bold spire the Admiralty, is worthy of a
great nation. Along the splendid quays, bounded by the pink granite of Finland,
the Neva bathes innumerable palaces, museums, with priceless masterpieces, an
ancient citadel, and its charming islands, as beautiful in the soft spring
nights as in their winter dress. From his gigantic pedestal Peter the Great
watches over his capital, so poetically described by your immortal Pouchkine.
It is the first time that a large city has seen together,
called by its Municipal Council, such numerous and important delegations from
foreign municipalities. Allow me to hope that it will not be the last, and that
this day marks an epoch, the point of departure of a new era in the history of inter-communal and international relations.
I believe that for the historians of
the future the most characteristic feature of our time will perhaps be the
irresistible movement leading men to unite in each country, and each country
with another, where common interests draw them together, or similar conditions
of life or identical aspirations. For the last fifty years we have seen
International Conferences created, where, periodically, the chiefs amongst the
politicians and lawyers of the great civilised nations, by studying, by
discussing the complex and difficult questions, raised by the organisation of
work and other important problems of social life, learn to know one another, to
understand one another, and to appreciate one another ; we have seen, on the
initiative of a large hearted monarch, all the powers concerting, and all the
desires for peace of our epoch taking shape in the Conference of the Hague.
INTER-COMMUNAL PARLIAMENT
Why should we not endeavour to
establish among us a system of permanent relations, allowing us to share
experiences, confide our attempts to one another, study together the causes of
our successes and failures?
It is certain that work would not be lacking in
this kind of inter-communal parliament. The problems which the development of
the modern city lays before us are practically the same for all latitudes, and
do not cease to grow in extent and importance. Everywhere the country is
becoming depopulated, and the workers are migrating to the towns; everywhere
poverty, the overcrowding of slum dwellings, ignorance of the laws of hygiene,
favour the spread of tuberculosis, and of epidemics generally.
- What is the
method suitable to adopt in order ensure the normal extension of the city?
- How
is the struggle against poverty and slums to be conducted?
- How is knowledge of
and respect for the laws of hygiene to be propagated amongst the workers?
- How
shall a comfortable and healthy lodging at a reasonable price be procured for
them and what method should govern the establishment of the budget of a great
city?
- What is the best way of managing the great communal services?
So many
questions which, imperiously demand our attention and upon which it would be of
the greatest interest to exchange views, require solution by us. “But,
gentlemen, however great the practical importance of our meetings might be,
their moral compass would be still greater. In the profoundly troublous period
we are going through, where rival ambitions are searching for a perpetually
unstable equilibrium, have not all often had the impression that, the forces of
peace and the forces of war being practically equal, an imprudent movement, or
a passionate movement, would be enough for a misunderstanding cleverly worked
to let loose on the world a frightful catastrophe?
It depends upon us to
constitute an incomparable peace force by establishing from city to city an
ever closer network of friendship, and with ever closer bonds. More free than
the governments of our respective countries to follow the inspirations of our
hearts, more representative on account of the order with which we are invested
than simply private individuals, we can have our own role, quite our own, in
preparing and consolidating these friendly relations which, propagated from
country to country, will end, one day—l hope soon —by encircling the Universe.”
This speech was given on 2 June 1914. Just eight weeks later World War One broke out.
Makes you think does it not? What would have happened if such a Parliament had been established? What if the forces of peace had held sway against rival ambitions? How many millions of lives would have been saved?
Those who claim that NATO is the foundation of peace in Europe, are wrong in my view. The foundation of peace is the European Movement that Winston Churchill and others established as the anecdote to the tragedy that beset Europe in the 30 years that followed this speech. We should as a nation be seeking to nurture the European Movement at a time when once again those who promote nationalist rivalries are making ill informed attempts to unravel it all.
Why have we, the nation that has stood up twice to the forces of nationalism that have come close to destroying Europe in the last century, reached a point where we consider that we have no role to play in that which we have helped to build? Why are we entertaining the values of nationalism that has been responsible for claiming millions of lives? We should - nay must reject those values and consign them to the past once and for all.
