GAIETY" 
ABROAD. 
By 
RICHARD 
MARSH. 
Illustrated by 
Bert Tbomas. 
LEADING journal the other 
day contained a statement to 
the effect that it was still a 
reproach against the English 
holiday resort that it lacked 
the gaiety offered by its Con- 
tinental rival ; that in our 
seaside towns little or nothing is done to 
attract and amuse possible patrons, compared 
to what is found abroad. The same authority 
went on to state that, with us, prices ar»e 
higher than on the other side of the Channel. 
This sort of thing has been printed so often 
in newspapers which profess to inform the 
public, that one wonders if any of the gentle- 
men who write in them have ever been abroad. 
France is practically the only country in 
Europe, except England, in which a seaside 
town is found in the sense in which we use 
the phrase. Beginning with Calais, and going 
right down to Spain, the present writer 
ventures to assert that there is not one town 
on the whole coast-line in which anything at 
all is done to attract the ordinary seaside 
visitor. The municipality — or what stands 
with them as a municipality — does nothing. 
This is a startling state of things when one 
considers that in practically every seaside 
town in England the municipality does some- 
thing in the first, place to attract visitors, and, 
having attracted them, to amuse them. 
Begin with Holland, in which the seaside 
holiday resort, in the English sense, is found 
for the first time, and let us follow the genus 
all round the coast-line. 
Nowadays Russians get as near to the sea, 
in the summer, as they can, but there is no 
seaside resort in Russia. Stockholm in June, 
July, and August can be delicious; people 
there seem to make holiday all day and all 
night long. But one would hardly call it a 
seaside resort, Heligoland is the nearest 
thing to a seaside resort provided by the 
German Empire, which is one reason why 
Germans are found in such numbers outside 
their own country during the summer months. 
The first town by the sea, the end and aim of 
whose being is to attract holiday-seekers, is 
— let it be repeated — to be found in Holland — 
and the name of it is Scheveningen. 
Scheveningen is by way of being a curiosity. 
Some people might call it picturesque ; no one 
could call it pretty. It is really nothing but 
a sandy waste. When I first knew Scheven- 
ingen it was a village, all sand ; now it has 
nearly thirty thousand people, and just as 
much sand. It is the first place in which 
the “ gaiety 77 of the Continental seaside town 
is encountered. It takes the form, as it 
always does, of the Casino ; here it is called the 
Kursaal. 
We are always being told in England, by 
