Tourist Privileges

Since every German has been warned by his Government to be polite to foreigners, conductors on trains in the Fatherland now bustle anxiously up & down the aisles, asking, "Would you like this window raised? Are you enjoying Germany? Do you know that Adolf Hitler is now our best-educated man because, although he never went to university, he calls our best German professors to lecture to him several times a week?" Italy has slashed her railway and hotel rates so deeply for tourists that they are partial gifts. Last week, with King Edward and the British Prime Minister both canceling their scheduled vacation trips to France (see p. 21), the Chamber of Deputies in Paris was in a mood to hear what is the matter with France as a tourists' paradise. Primed to tell them with authority was Deputy Gaston-Gerard who spent several frustrated years as Undersecretary of State for Tourism.

"Other countries have instituted 'tourist money' and 'tourist privileges' while France has offered a premium to French tourist agencies to get tourists to travel in other countries!" cried M. Gaston-Gerard. "Our railway travel costs nearly twice as much as in Great Britain. The price of gasoline in France is prohibitive and tourists no longer bring their cars. While other countries make tourists welcome we start taxing them as soon as they disembark!"

Other Deputies took up the chorus until new Premier Leon Blum's Cabinet finally had to make rebuttal. To Deputy Gaston-Gerard's specific, constructive proposal that a cheapened 'tourist franc' be introduced, the Cabinet returned a flat "non" merely promised to spend a little more "pour encourager le tourisme."

Europe's champion tourist-flouters have consistently been Spaniards, whether or not they are having a Revolution. While Frenchmen assume that of course a foreigner is lucky to be in France at any price, Spaniards haughtily consider the tourist a fool for not staying at home. Greatest Spanish feat along this line was to build at stupendous cost in the days of King Alfonso XIII the finest network of concrete roads outside the U. S. and then omit to spend the few additional millions on advertising which would have made them teem with tourist cars. His Majesty personally did more to encourage tourists than has any other King or Emperor, would stop and shake hands with American Express Co. groups of 200 and more.

Newest wrinkle in Soviet travel is the appearance in droves of foreign tourists born in Russia who at last have plucked up enough courage to go and see what their native village is like today. Mostly naturalized in the U. S., they travel 3,500 miles to exclaim "What a dump!" In Soviet hotels guests are offered such strange alternatives as "You can have with your dinner either caviar or a fresh vegetable or ice cream."

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