Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 233, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1917 — TRAVEL IN EUROPE [ARTICLE]

TRAVEL IN EUROPE

War Time Experience of Interest, to Tourists of the Good Old Days. JOYS AND HARDSHIPS CITED Impression of American Woman, Traveling With Two Children, That Second Class Was Comfortable, Soon Shattered. An American woman with two children recently traveled from Paris to Rome. As a matter of economy, and relying upon the impression gained before the war that the second class was comfortable, she traveled second class. It was comfortable in France, but when an Italian train was taken, at Modane, a train that also accommodated local travel, she found her company to consist of men and women just a little better than the peasant type, none too cleanly in dress and given to eating all sorts of food and drinking all kinds of wine in their seats, according to a correspondent of Railway Age Gazette. The discomfort of the journey was increased when, near Turin, it began to rain. The woman was looking out the window watching the rain pour down the hillsides, only as it seems to have been able to do since the war began, when she felt some water dripping "upon her hair. She looked up to discover that, through a. leak in the car .roof, the rain had come in, utterly ruined a new hat, and was busy soaking into her valises stowed in The racks overhead. The further the train went the worse it rained. She went to try to find seats tn another car. All of them were leaking. Ah appeal to the conductor was fruitless. “What can you expect?” he said. “The sun was so hot during the summer it opened up these seams in the car roofs, and they haven't been repaired. It’s war time,” and so forth.

wfnt to Sleep in Boulogne. Supposing you are provided with proper passports, you are able to buy your railroad ticket without difficulty and travel even through the war zones, until you come to a frontier station. Here your difficulties may be few or many, according, not to your passports, but to your luck. I knew one man who went from Italy to England and back again and his only unusual experience was this: At Boulogne he went to bed on board a channel boat expecting to wake up the next mofhlng at Dover. He woke up once or twice during the night, heard the usual splashing of water through the porthole, and promptly went to sleep again, unafraid of submarines. Shortly after daylight he woke up, looked out and saw that the vessel was tied up to a dock. He dressed, packed his Valise and went upon deck, ready to go ashore. There he saw the same dock he had seen the night before he went td bed. Surprised, he asked if the vessel had been forced to put back to Boulogne during the night. “She hasn’t left the dock at all,” he was told. “Her departure has been postponed until tonight. Meanwhile you passengers must go ashore and report to the police station." The man spent a dull day and finally did arrive at Dover the next morning.

On the other hand, qt the frontiers, many people, especially women, have adventures which to some of them are particularly dreadful. Many of the spies used by both sides in the war have been women. Consequently all women are apt to be subjected to search at the frontiers, no matter in which direction they may be going. Customs officers have been made wary by multi tudes of tricks. Thus it being unlawful as a matter of national economy for persons to take gold coin out of France into Italy, or out of Italy into France, or any other country, a poor woman carrying t> basket of eggs recently was stopped at Modane. Inspection of the basket revealed under the eggs 20,000 lire in gold. It-is not unusual for country women to carry baskets of eggs or chickens, but the trick of on<. has since made the frontier difficult for the others. A distinguished French woman, who had spent some months In Italy, stimu-

lating charity w’ork for the soldiers, on returning home took a personal note from the French ambassador asking that she be courteously treated at the frontier. Had she gone to France by way of Modane all would doubtless have been well, but at the last momenf she decided to return by way of Switzerland, an equally good route were it not for the war. As Switzerland’s folk hav£ been strongly suspected of trying to play the good old game of both ends against the middle, and thereby earn an honest living, by the French, the Italians, the Austrians and the Germans, travelers into her confines are searched with care. The woman in question aroused some unusual suspicion among the Italian officers at the frontier and she was searched right down to the skin, to the last thread of her hair. Her body was washed, to erase any writing secreted on her skin. Her clothing was gone over, the seams unsewed, her private letters read, treated with chemical solutions to discover cipher writing—in short, the third degree of the frontiers was applied in all its rigors. When the woman was finally released, with nothing found of a suspicious nature, she dressed and came out in front of the other travelers suffocating with rage. Trick of English Traveler. An English woman present, who was on her way to see sick friends in Switzerland, naturally unwilling to go through tne same examination if she could prevent it, began to cry when her turn came. “I’m fainting. I’m fainting. Take me away from here." As the examiners have a holy horror of fainting women, who cau.se all kinds of trouble, they swiftly plucked her from the crowd and passed her and her baggage into the awaiting train.