PROSPECTS BRIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 215, 11 September 1930, Page 10

PROSPECTS BRIGHT.

COMING TOURIST SEASON. ! SIGNS READ ABROAD. ) : TRAVEL IN FRANCE. Prospects for the coining tourist seaeon in New Zealand were astonishingly good, thought Mr. R. J. Anwyl, manager for New Zealand and Australia for the firm of Thomas Cook and Son, who is m Auckland, ihaving just returned from a world tour. He referred to conditions in the United States, on account oi the recent crasli on Wall Street, but ine had gained the opinion that there would be a larger development of private and independent travel rather than big groups and cruises. He was optimistic regarding the tourist prospects in Australia, despite the present economic position.

It was reasonable to conclude, Mr. Anwyl said, that a considerable number of Australians who had hitherto gone to Europe would'confine their holiday or health trips to nearer fields, and 'New Zealand should thereby benefit. The Trade and Tourist Commissioner for New. Zealand in Australia, Mr. L. J. Sehmitt, was a "live wire," he said, and Mr. Anwyl's firm was working in conjunction with him -wherever the Dominion could be advertised. In a few weeks' time a big campaign would be launched in the Commonwealth, the object of which was to advance the prospecte of New Zealand.

When in England Mr. Anwyl noted the conditions pertaining to New Zealand, and he felt that t&e attractions of its scenic resorts were better known than those of Australia. "New Zealand is curiously easy to talk about at Home," Qie remarked. "Everybody seems to know all about the country, for the reason this is quite English in outlook. Further, it lends itself to discussion. Its main features are outstanding and travelling distances are comparatively small." In the course of his tour Mr. Anwyl gave a series of lecturettes. These talks were well received, and a reflection of this was to be seen in the bookings already received for travel in the Dominion. Battlefields in France. "I visited'the 'battlefields,' , said, Mr. Anwyl, "and when I was there it 'was a real Ssmme day. It rained in ,torrents, and the sleet was just as. bad." War starns were now practically removed, he said, and expeditionary force men would be interested, to learn that "Hell's Kitchen" no longer even remotely deserved its name. Only in little scattered woods, whose growth was new, could traces of fighting still ibe seen. Hidden in the greenness of the new foliage, and entangled in the older wood, barbed wire yet bound these little copses round. They were- few, though. •'* It was not uncommon to see. a pile of war debris in the corners of the iields. Mr. Anwyl vas reminded of Southey's- poem about the battle of Blenheim, -where the peasant grandfather says about the skulls of soldiers killed,' "And often when I go to plough, the ploughshare turns. them out." Frequently the French farmers unearthed such remnants of war when they were ploughing, and old torn gunmctal mouldered in forgotten corners of a [hundred farme. As in Days of Yore. Tiers was one piece of territory, he eaid, just north of Albert, on the Somme front, known as the Newfoundland National Park, which was preserved just as it was when the last shot was fired before the Armistice. Mr. Anwyl got out of the car, and in the rain and mud ihe went clown into the trenches, in conditions as they were of yore. More and more people were travelling, he said. It was becoming the accepted thing to spend a vacation on the Continent. Travel was a great antidote to parochialism. To see much was to learn much.