On Thursday, December 20, certain important interests, including railway companies,
hotel proprietors, and so on, formed an Association to attract visitors to Great Britain. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister said that the Government would ask Parliament for a guarantee of £5,000 next year. Lord Reading pointed out that last year we had half a million visitors, while France had some 1,800,000, who spent nearly £100,000,000. It is expected that about £25,000 a year will he raised by the Association, so that if, as a result, we get only half the number of visitors to France there should be a great profit on the outlay. Our feelings are not quite unmixed. If the prospect of foreigners, armed with Baedekers and escorted by guides, swarming over our most beautiful places makes us pause, we have to acknowledge that every remedy for unemployment should be encouraged unless it does any radical harm to the country. Those who travel on our railways and eat in our hotels help our trade as much as those who buy our exports. Politically we shall gain by our visitors getting to know us better as a nation. It will be for us to produce a favourable impression. One simple way of doing this is to be careful not to destroy the natural beauty which the visitors come to see by defacing roads and fields with advertisements or leaving litter about. The Association might make our watering-places more attractive. Must all Americans when they have " done " our " beauty spots " rush straight across to the plates of Deauville, Biarritz, and the Lido ? Our sands and our sea are as good as any.
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