TO MAKE BERLIN THE WORLD’S CITY

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 75, 21 December 1929, Page 33

TO MAKE BERLIN THE WORLD’S CITY

The real secret behind the orgy of spending that is transforming Berlin into a metropolis, combining the most attractive features of London, Paris, New York and Chicago is said to be the determination of the Berliners to make it The World’s City. A great international advertising campaign is to broadcast the slogan that during the winter and, according to a Berlin correspondent of the London “Daily Express,” the rest of Germany will be sacrificed to the creation of the national shop window which Berlin, "the vampire metropolis,” is expected to provide for the Republic. Berlin is being exploited at the expense of the other great cities of Germany, we read, and mention is made of Munich, Leipzig, Breslau, Hamburg, Dresden, and Cologne. The process of centralisation is said to be sucking the life-blood of the provincial centres, and Berlin is now what it never was before the war—the capital cf Germany. This informant goes on tr say:

“One of the many intriguing features o. the ambitious schemes prepared for the ‘big push’ is a post-graduate course in the Art of Dealing with the Tourist. The students will include officials from hotel, theatre, shop, and trausporta-

tion organisations, the net result being, it is hoped, an even further strengthening of the national consciousness toward visitors.

“The most extraordinary aspect of this concentration on Berlin is its mass direction. No personalities emerge from the many organisations concerned. The business is being tackled in the same spirit which has given Germany more sports centres and more air-lines than any other country in the world during the past eight years.

“Germany, in pursuance of the robot ideal, is quickly becoming a nation of brains without temperament. The clear thought behind the process of rationalisation which has brought prosperity. say. to the coal and iron industries’™ the Ruhr is being applied even to such things as tipping “nd night life.

“The 10 per cent, principle of tipping has been introduced seriously, and every European traveller will appreciate that qualification: it is added, to the bill of the visitor at the leading hotels, and to the workman who drinks a glass of beer at a cafe—-and it is considered quite sufficient. Taxi-cab drivers expect no tips, and there are no :i moying municipal taxes.”