THE PRINCE'S TRAVELS.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20306, 4 August 1931, Page 12

THE PRINCE'S TRAVELS.

200,000 MILES. VISITS TO FORTY COUNTRIES. (moit our own. cowuwojrosHT.) LONDON, Juno 25. Has tho Prince of Wales achieved a world record in travel? as s special correspondent "Observer," and replies that a rea y aflirmative is easy, but it may bo un thinking. Maybe there is somewhere a traveller whose unrecorded Odyssejs beat the Prince's. There is the case of Mr Leon Estrabrook, an American. To get every country in the world to take a census of agriculture in 19"9-<>o he spent the previous four ycais visiting every single seat of govern inent on the globe, except those o: Afghanistan (which happened to be in no condition to receive him), and one or two places in Central Africa, let, after all, this remarkable achievement only strengthens tho impression that the Prince's travels must bo unique, for he has not gone from one country to the next, but has crossed oceans and continents many times to react his various objectives, and when o has reached them he has visited every place of interest. In Europe the only countries ho has not visited are Russia and the Balkan States. Disregarding Europe, .the following is tho list of his tours since the war: 1920, Australia and New Zealand; 1921-22, India and Japan; 1923, Canada; 1934, United States; 1925, Africa and South America; .19-7, Canada; 1928-29, Africa; 1930, Africa; 1931, South America. To Canada, whore the Prince has a ranch, he has made two additiona visits, and it is possible he may go there again next year in connexion with the World Grain Exibition.

A Mileage of 200,000. A computation of the mileage covered from point to point in these tours, and making no allowance for local travelling, works out at about i! 00,000, which is equal to eight complete journeys round the earth. One may read of the great fuss Queen Victoria made, and of the months of tension she suffered, when her eldest son, afterwards King Edward, was going to Egypt "to Bit beneath the Pyramids." One wonders what sho would have said of the way the Prince has taken advantage of the ample pinion which modern science has lent to travel. For he undertakes an Empire tour with rather less concern than his great-grandmother in going to Balmoral—certainly with less concern than Queen Victoria's ladies felt on these occasions. At any rate, this may be said of the travelling itself: the planning, of course, is a prodigious job. It is worth while setting out just what countries the Prince has visited, outside Europe, in # the last twelve years. Hero they are:—

Canada Braiil New Zealand Panama Australia Gambia India * St. Helena South Africa Trinidad Malta Grenada Gold Coast St. Lucia British East Africa Barbados Kenya Montserrat Tanganyika British Guiana Bhodesia Bermudas Nigeria Fiji Sierra Leone Samoa Malaya The Philippines United States » Borneo Argentina Ceylon Chili Straits Settlements Uruguay Aden Peru • Hong Kong Bolivia Some of these countries the Prince has visited more than once. He has reconnoitred at every point of the compass. The kaleidoscope o£ his travels shows him now riding a bullock or an elephant, now soaring into the air, now crossing the Andes from the Atlantic to the Pacific, now climbing rocks to reach an African gold mine, sweltering in the Indian sun or shivering at the southernmost point of New Zealand, receiving Indian princes in pomp and state or making his laborious way through ' 'pillared aisles of sago, palms, mahogany, and red devil trees." A Harvest of Experience. But the Prince has treated the world less as a playground than as a mighty harvest-ground, of experience. He is the type of intelligence that gain% richly and quickly from observation _ and talkj he understands, say, the native question in Kenya more truly than any student of Blue Books. Mechanical things he grasps , readily also. And yet it might have been otherwise with him. He might havo been born with that "natural horror of sights" that made Dickens say he could not bear to go to the Great Exhibition a second time. On his latest trip, the one to South America, the Prince appeared more conspicuously than before in the role of i unofficial trade ambassador, and, though he would deprecate any attempt to measure the value of his work there in terms of money, there is no doubt that his personal 6clat has done British trade in South America an immense amount of good. He is renewing the tradition of the Prince Consort on a grand scale. Who can gainsay that the.two pieces of. counsel he is constantly giving as the result of his travels, "Adopt, adapt, \and improve," and, "Let the heads of businesses themselves go and see," axe eminently sound? ®lt should be added that the State does not pay for all these tours, but only for those which the Government itself suggests. The trip to South America, for instance, though entirely a business one, was paid for by the Prince.