FOREIGN TOURIST TRADE 
AMERICANS Dip Not Even JouRNEY 
To THE West INpiEs THIS 
WINTER. 
Few Americans traveled abroad 
this last winter. The tourist hotels 
everywhere felt the pinch caused by 
the absence of the American tourist. 
Even in the West Indies, where it 
was thought a great deal of the Amer- 
ican winter travel would be. directed 
this season, the hotels have missed the 
tourists. Because of this disposition 
on the part of Americans, who travel 
in winter in normal times, American 
resorts have benefited. The southern 
resorts have been well populated the 
past season and New Englanders will 
remember with pleasure the profitable 
season of 1916. From the same indi- 
cations which led hotel men last year 
tc predict a busy and prosperous sea- 
son on the North Shore it would ap- 
pear that the coming summer should 
be a record breaker. The following, 
taken from the Boston Courier, the 
organ of the New England hotel men, 
is interesting at this time: 
“The American consul at Hamilton, 
Bermuda, reported under date of Feb- 
ruary 15 that the largest hotel in that 
place was to close at the end of that 
week, after having been open only 
six weeks, savs the “Hartford Courant. 
The trouble is, of course, that the 
tourists did not come. The local peo- 
ple of these show places, or climate 
places, do not use hotels, and when 
outsiders do not flock in the hotels 
languish. Mr. Loop wrote that the 
next largest hotel would remain open 
a few weeks longer, ‘although its 
number of guests is comparatively 
small.” 
“The song has it that Billy was all 
dressed up and had no place to go. 
It is not so much the tourists. There 
are just as many places for them to 
so to as there ever were, not only 
Bermuda, but in Switzerland, on the 
Riviera, and so on in the outside 
world. But the going is not good. In 
« good many cases there is no going 
at all. Belgium and Holland used to 
Fave many interesting things to see, 
and not a bad climate in the right 
season; but there is too much. blast- 
ing in those countries just now, 
either active or potential, for anybody 
to visit them for comfort or pleasure, 
even if the chances were good that 
the journey might be made in safety. 
Presumably the midnight sun is still 
operating at the northern end of Nor- 
way, but the conditions of the way 
thither and back have turned it into 
en obiect of aversion rather than of 
attraction; while Palestine and the 
other lands at the eastern end of the 
Mediterranean Sea have been trans- 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
formed from lazy spots into danger 
spots. -The places are all there, so 
far as the topography is concerned, 
just as they used to be, but conten- 
tions, and black hatred have now 
taken the place of the ancient peace. 
“What this change means to the 
hotel and inn keepers of these vari- 
ous places may be readily imagined. 
Take Switzerland as an example. In 
the peaceful days everybody, who 
travelled at all, went to Switzerland 
just to see it, and left good money 
there for the privilege of seeing it. 
The hotels keepers collected “this 
money, and of course kept their per- 
centage before passing it on into the 
eeneral funds of the country. Hotel 
keeping was thus an active industry 
of the country, and it was a spot cash 
industry. What is that industry now? 
Something of it is probably left, for 
Sw itzerland is an oasis in the desert 
cf warring nations—or you may call 
it an island in the storm-driven sea 
of international hatreds—and as an 
casis or an island it still has its at- 
tvactions. 
But nobody goes there now to see 
Switzerland. Its lakes smile with all 
their customery loveliness, and_ its 
mountains are grouped in towering 
clusters as if nature, after having 
erected some of these church steeples 
of her own handiwork to towering 
heights—as in the Himalayas, or in 
cur own Rockies, or in Mount Dema- 
vend, the old and it is to be hoped 
dead volcano which broods over the 
Persian plateau of Teheran—had 
picked up a handful of what was left 
over and dumped it all upon that 
little land, not to masterly heights. 
but in a great congregation. But the 
tourists who manage to get into 
Switzerland in these days are not 
looking for lakes or mountains. They 
are following the rule of safety first, 
as those do who flee from a raging 
woodland fire; and their desire to get 
away from the whirling flames of war 
would be just the same if Switzerland 
were as flat as a pancake and as 
waterless as the desert of Sahara. 
We need not say that those who are 
escaping from calamity of any sort 
do not make profitable raw material 
for the hotel industry. 
“Tt is just the same with Venice. 
Venice is all there, at least outwardly, 
as she was in the days of peace. 
Probably the doves still come in 
flocks to the piazza of San Marco for 
their daily luncheon, but the tourists 
who used to feed them, and think it 
great sport, are not there. The gen- 
cral tourist mind is thinking today 
more of cannon than of doves. The 
hotels, little and big, that face the 
grand canal and look out toward the 
Adriatic, are no longer welcoming the 
March 16, 1917 
coming guest and speeding the de- 
parting guest. The gondoliers are ne 
longer collecting their deserved tri- 
bute from strangers, but getting as 
much as they can from the home peo- 
ple, or perhaps have had to drop the 
car for a gun, and the merry mid- 
night melodies which used to float 
gently in at the windows from the 
travelled waters have all ceased. The 
lctels are there, and the level streets 
of water are there; all the pictur- 
esque geography is there; but the 
tourists who used to fill the hotels, 
some in order to see a new kind of 
life, some for study, and some in 
o-der to kill time amid delightful sur- 
roundings—these are not there. Some 
of them still live, but these are not 
using their minds for the purpose of 
pleasure. Some have been shot to 
death, and nobody knows how they 
are using their minds. 
“Tt is a bad time for foreign hotels 
of the tourist type, as Mr. Loop says. 
War has caught the mass of them in 
its net, and the best that they can do 
is to wait, with the rest of the world, 
until the net is taken off.” 
Meanwhile America prospers. 
NortH SHoRE MEN, ATTENTION! 
Your Services ArE CALLED For. 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy 
Roosevelt emphasizes the imperative 
necessity of immediate organization of 
New England naval defence district. 
He has declared that 500 patrol boais 
should be secured and 5000 civilians 
should offer their services within tiie 
next two weeks. As a result of his 
tour of the Atlantic coast, and with 
his return to Washington, he said 
that Boston was doing better than any 
other coast port in preparing for war, 
but that even that city could show im- 
provement. He said that not more 
than two weeks at the most should 
pass before New England in general 
and Boston particular should be pre- 
pared defensively. 
In referring to the district between 
Eastport, Me. and Provincetown 
Mass., he says: ‘Because of the lack 
of officers and men, the district can 
only be organized with the help of 
civilians. Plans are all ready to take 
over boats and organize naval re- 
serves. Five hundred boats and five 
thousand men are wanted within two 
weeks. The time is two weeks, not 
months, and not a year. While Bos- 
ton is doing better than any other 
port district, it is not working as fast 
as | would like to see it work.” 
“What are you running for sonny?” 
“l’m tryin’ to keep two fellows 
from fightin.’ ” 
“Who are the fellows?” 
“Bill Perkins and Me!”—Puck. 
oe ie 
