Cook Tours

Though Mount Vesuvius is ever a-seething and a-smoking, timid tourists do not fear to ascend, when told that the funicular railway is owned and run by Thomas Cook & Son.

In fine, where Cooks will take you, it must be safe to go. Last week this largest tourist firm announced, for the first time, that they will hereafter make travel arrangements "for all those who may wish to go to Soviet Russia."

The once insuperable difficulty in obtaining a Soviet Visa has been overcome. Russia is safe, stable. And Cooks will sell to anyone for approximately $280 a transportation ticket, including sleeping berths where necessary, for the 12-day, 7,530-mile journey from Paris via Moscow and Siberia to Peking.

Seasoned travelers who remember the Trans-Siberian trip from before the War, could not detect, last week, anything changed or unfamiliar in the following description, released by Cooks, of the journey as it is today:

"The sleeping cars are clean and well served. . . . The trains do about 25 miles per hour with frequent stops to fuel at wood piles along the way. . . . About half the passengers usually eat in the diner. The other half buy food from the peasants and have picnic meals in their compartments. The peasants gather at the stations at train time with all kinds of cooked food for sale . . . good bread, golden honey, boiled milk, roast ducks and chickens. . . .

"Each of the first-class sleepers is provided with a samovar kept going all the time, so that one can always get a glass of hot tea, day or night."

In the old days it was the privilege and habit of the Tsars to stop their Imperial Train on the single track Trans-Siberian line at any point which fancy might dictate, while they picnicked, strolled in the woods, or received the homage of peasants. Meanwhile, for scores of miles up and down the line, local traffic would be suspended and of course all through express trains stopped.