A TOUR ABROAD

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 19 August 1933, Page 12

A TOUR ABROAD

AUCKLANDER’S IMPRESSIONS DEPRESSION IN FRANCE The absence of Americans and the few Englishmen in France has Lad a most depressing effect on I’m is and the Riviera, said .Mr Eliot R Davis in the course of an address at an Auckland Rotary Club luncheon (repo.':.; the ‘Tieraid”). “Paris used to be called t Ire ‘gay city,’ but it is anything but that now,” lie said. “An air of depression is everywhere and the cabaret district is deserted.” Monte Carlo also was affected. Gambling in the Casino had dwindled to a minimum and no credit was given to patrons. A new sporting club, erected at a cost of £2,UCO,COO, was opened last December and had to be closed after two months owing to lack of support. The effects of the depression in England also were plainly visible. Many hitherto wealthy people had been forced to sell their homes; others were actually charging the public for admittance to "their grounds and serving afternoon tea to the public. A duke had opened an egg and butter,shop in London and was selling butter embossed with His own coat-of-arms. The extraordinary thing was that in spite of all these sighs of bad times, places of amusement were crowded.

Mr Davis described a visit to Italy, during the course of which ho motored over some of the magnificent new roads built under the Mussolini regime. One of these highways, linking Pisa and Florence, was 40 miles long and perfectly straight, all curves being elimmated and all crossroads being carried over it by means of bridges. “The toll charges on this road amount to 15 lira, or 3s 6d, so that the road is re-veliue-producing,” he said. “Its surface is so perfect and it runs so straight that it took us oulv 30 minutes to motor the 40 miles.”