FLEECING THE FOREIGNER.

Northern Advocate, 23 July 1923, Page 8

FLEECING THE FOREIGNER.

GERMANY'S POLLY

It was an a very lachrymose mood that the Gerihan hotel and restaurant proprietors met at Hanover for their annual "Parliament" (says the London "Telegraph's" Berlin correspondent). When they last came together, a yfear ago, they were still unanimously of opinion that the foreigner liked been fleeced, and that the more thoroughly he was fleeced, and that the more thoroughly he was clipped, the thicker his wopl would grow. This time they had to admit to one .another that there had been a mistake in the calculation, and that the foreigner, instead of yielding more wool, had run away altogether. , A year ago it was difficult to get into a decent hotel in any big German town, even if one shook hands with the hall porter, prostrated himself before the manager, and gave a large bribe to the booking clerk. But it was admitted at Hanover recently that in the course of last year the custom of German hotels had fallen by 50 per cent, and that the watering places and holiday resorts werp doing very bad business. Munich, which has surpassed all other German towns in plundering, insulting apd annoying its alien visitors, as in every other form of political lunacy, was iable to report a correspondingly brillant success. In that town no fewer than a thousand •places of public refreshment, or 30 per cent, of the number previously existing, had. been comjkdled to put iip their shutters: for lack of trade.

In a speech of welcome the local. Prefect, Herr Noske, - formerly Minister of Defence, said it was appropriate that the gathering should take place at Hanover, since that town had hitherto been spared serious political and economic struggles. He might have given the further reason, that, headed by tho municipality, it had been a prominent exponent of the doctrine of "making the foreigner pay," the consequences of which hotelkeepers are now bewailing so' bitterly. Oddly enough it was Dr. Kinken Wirth, legal adviser to the Hanover Chamber of Commerce, who led the chorus of lamentation, with the declaration that foreign visitors must be enticed into the country by all possible means (Hanover has by this time, no doubt, discovered that the best way to attract foreigners is not to charge them double the menu prices for their meals). He also said that the dwelling tax must be immediately and completely removed.

' "When the devil was 111 the devil a saint would be," and the hotel ptdprietors, being tlio first to feel the m; evitable -consequences of the German i policy of fleecing the.-foreigner, are the first to realise the folly and shortsightedness of others, who only did . what they set themselves the example of doing. Their contrition, however, | only extends so far to the - extortions and impositions of others, and there will be much more talk before anyone takes the initiative in renouncing some part of his share of the loot. The German Government changes its policy, about visas every few. weeks, so that one never knows whether, on applying for one at the Consulate, one will be kept waiting two hours in the coal-hole until a refusal is hurled in one's face, or asked into the drawing-room and offered a glass of sherry to keep one amused while the formalities of con-, sent are being rushed through. Apart from these incalculable and bewildering oscillations, there has been no substantial change here in the treatment of the foreigner. He pays a higher price for his hotel room" and then 87) per cent, addition to that as "dwelling tax"; at nearly all places of entertainment. from the Opera House to the Zoological Gardens, ho must pay 300 or 400 per cent, more than the native. And if an opportune fall of the marl* should enable him to buy a suit ; a hat or a pair of boots cheaper than rt home —only a piece of luck would j allow him to do this—he might have them all torn off his person by the j Customs Officials and be sent back j

across the ' frontier in his underclothing, with bare head and feet. 'S'ot a very lohg time to come Gfermanv wifl be a suitable holiday resoVt only f6f tliose who are so enthusiastically litigious' they they like quarrelling, even if they always have to pay for it.'