1936 On the Continent

League, where Sir Samuel Hoare (when he was at the Foreign Office), accompanied by Baron Aloisi or President Benes, would talk over the grave problems of the hour from an angle, and under a sky too, quite other than at bleak Geneva.
    Three famous and magnificent roads lead to Mentone, the most important town of the coast after Nice: the Grande Corniche, which has the most beautiful view, the Moyenne Corniche, which is the most modern, and, oldest of the three, the Petite Corniche.
Mentone
    In recent years Mentone (25,000 inhabitants) has lost a good deal of its world-wide fame to its younger competitors, particularly Juan-Les-Pins and St. Tropez. For all that, this frontier town is wonderfully located, and with its calm avenues, beaches and streets, and despite its casino, cinemas, and dance-halls, remains almost theideal place for a rest cure. Being less fashionable than Nice or Cannes, it has become a kind of retreat for the older generation, and especially for the older aristocracy.
    The town is built in Italian style and full of old churches, ruins and monuments, such as the ancient Palais des Princes de Monaco, the Church of Saint-Michel, the house in the Rue Bréa (No. 2) where Pope Pius VII once lived and where the Catholic sovereigns, the Queens of Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc., came each year in pilgrimage.
    Most of the hotels in Mentone still date back to the time of its prosperity. The smartest and most luxurious are the Hotel Imperial (80 francs), Winter Palace and Riviera Palace (30-50 francs).
    The Hôtel Annonciata (
pension
from 50 francs) is where the famous French statesman, André Tardieu, has retired during the last few years, and he can be seen quite frequently with other leaders of the French Right parties taking long walks or drives towards the fine golf course of Sospel.
    About 2 miles from Mentone the Pont Saint-Louis already marks the Italian frontier. It is a fascinating spot for the visitor. Constructed of a single arch of some 70 feet, it spans a savage ravine at a height of more than 200 feet.
    To the Pont Saint-Louis and back was one of the favourite walks of Rudyard Kipling, whose villa was not far from Mentone.
FROM NICE TO CANNES
    It is currently said that in the last few years whilst the towns and beaches between Nice and Menton have slightly declined in popularity, those in the other direction from Nice to Cannes and even further have become more and more fashionable.
    Whether that is really true or not, it is certain that the younger generation prefers Juan-Les-Pins or St. Tropez to Cap-Ferrat or Monte Carlo, and that whereas the King of Sweden spends a large part of his annual stay on the eastern coast of the Riviera, King Edward VIII, when still Prince of Wales, passed two successive seasons in Cannes and Golf-Juan.
    We have already referred to the fine golf course of Cagnes-sur-Mer, but even if you are not a golfer, spend atleast one afternoon in this unique spot on the Riviera which the great French painter Renoir may be said to have discovered and which, since the War, has remained the favourite town of the artists and writers. Built on a hill, Haut-de-Cagnes, with its old castle of the Grimaldi, its century-old street, its terraces and overhanging gardens, its old church and its cosmopolitan society, is an island of sheer beauty, cut off from the rest of the world and from the noise of the big towns. Its charm can only be equalled, perhaps, by the most picturesque villages of Andalusia or Sicily. The view from its heights, the vivid colours, and the sudden glimpses of outline and shade at the corners of its streets, have such an attraction for painters that last year a journalist was agreeably, though justifiably, surprised to see Winston Churchill sitting opposite the Old Town Hall busily engaged in finishing a painting.
    A dance in the evening, in the open air, Chez Jimmy, on the Place du Château, with a moonlit view of the Alps and of the sea, will certainly be one of the memories you will treasure up from your stay on the Riviera.
    From Cagnes let us leave the Mediterranean a moment and strike inland up through Vence, where the peasants, at harvest time, will gladly give you a few of their excellent grapes to taste; through Saint-Paul to Grasse, the town of the great painter Fragonard (at all costs visit the Musée Fragonard!), the capital of the French perfume industry. You can buy on the spot a few bottles of the leading marks of perfume after seeing the flowers