TRAVEL MUST BE BOTH WAYS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Colonel Hutchison does well to stress the importance of travel as a corrective to parochial insularity. It is surely a paradox that a Government which insists that our problems can be solved only by international understandings should put obstacles in the way of foreign travel for our own people. It is idle to attempt any distinction between travel for pleasure and travel for any other purpose. All travel is for pleasure, or should be. " All places that the eye of Heaven visits are to the wise man ports and happy havens." All experience is potentially educative. The only form of tourism which may, legitimately be deprecated is the practice of crossing the Channel to congregate with other Englishmen in hotels which adjoin a golf course or casino.
Especially is travel to be encouraged among those of under- graduate age. One may have (as I have) the highest opinion of a public school education and still be ready to admit that its influence necessarily tends to be nationalistic. Perhaps one of the milk obvious symptoms of nationalism in all countries is the attitude, conscious or sub-conscious, that foreigners are beingi of a lower order—" foreign devils " or " barbarians." Such an attitude can be speedily corrected by first-hand contact, and I can testify as a public school master to the broadening effect of a Continental trip upon boys of the school-leaving age.
As to the monetary argument, even our pre-occupied Chancellor of the Exchequer must have realized that by now there is nothing in it. The tax collector has left very few of us with enough spare cash to contemplate a visit to the Continent whether for winter sports or a tour of picture galleries or any other innocuous motive. Those few fortunate individuals who can afford a foreign holiday can apparently buy a Swiss holiday and at the same time help our own export trade. What more can a National Government desire ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
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