OLD STYLE AND NEW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23505, 20 May 1938, Page 11

OLD STYLE AND NEW

Writing of changes in modern life end habits, Mr Harold Nicolson says: —“ The chief changes are in pace. The extraordinary thing is that in some parts of the world you can recapture the old pace. I did it in Persia. There they travel as they did in 1500. One moves about with one’s own servants, possessions, and furniture. Personally I prefer modern life, for the Persian caravan type of journey means lots of boredom and fatigue. I prefer the ship and train method which we have just lived through. To my mind this is the ideal way of travelling, giving the intimacy of the old way, without its exhaustion and great expenditure of Lime. And then there’s the new system—flying. I have flown from the equator to Southampton, passing over tropical Africa, the Sudan, the Nile Valiev, the Aegean Islands, Athens, Ithaca, the Adriatic, the Abruzzi, Naples, Rome, Corsica, and the whole of France. For all the interest or beauty of that journey, I might have been flying over Ilfracombe. Far purposes of travel, I prefer the worm’s eye view to the bird’s eye. It may be wonderful thing to be able to say that one has flown from Brindisi to Southampton in a single day; but all the charm of travel lies in unfamiliar detail. Without that, travel is nothing but locomotion.”