1936 On the Continent

the Marne Valley, while every schoolchild knows all about Verdun.
    Sedan, Charleville, Troyes and Soissons are all places with historic associations, and all bear traces of the Great War.
    You will see beautiful churches in every town and village in this region, and grim medieval castles are also not lacking.
    But the scenery of the Champagne, with its rivers, forests and flower-carpeted fields, is truly charming. In addition,the inhabitants, consistently with the chief product of the region, are cheery and friendly, particularly towards English visitors.
ALSACE-LORRAINE
    Less well known than the Champagne are the two provinces Alsace and Lorraine. Indeed, it would require a whole book to describe their charm and attraction from the tourist’s point of view.
    Alsace and Lorraine are generally thought of as a single unit, which, to a certain extent, they are. In the main, however, they differ from each other in many essential respects, and the difference can perhaps be conveyed best by comparing Lorraine to a dignified, sedate young lady, and Alsace to a gay and mischievous miss.
    But you will like both, of that there can be no doubt. If you enter these provinces by car in the south of Alsace, by the Upper Vosges whose granite slopes no longer mark a frontier, you will be able to read the past and present history of the towns and villages as you pass them, or through them, in the ancient castles, old churches and busy farms, all set amid breath-takingly lovely scenery. You will come upon those strange and beautiful lakes, the Green, White and Black Lakes, which lie 3,000 and more feet above sea-level.
THE VOSGES
    The Vosges Range, some 70 miles long, from Belfort to Saverne, with its majestic but accessible summits, such as Grand Ballon, Hohneck and Douon, and the green Passes of Schlucht, Bonhomme and Sainte Marie, is in itself worth a trip to this part of France.
    And between the ridges nestle the valleys in which the life of the country proceeds. There is something human about the landscape of Alsace. In an indefinable way it tells the history—past and present—of the inhabitants, just like the eyries of the robber barons of olden times and the luxury hotels of modern times that crown some of the ridges tell a story of their own. Yet the towns and villages,the homes of the Alsatian people tell the most interesting story of all.
THE CITIES
    Strasbourg, the chief city of Alsace, is an old-new town with an infusion of picturesqueness and colour from the surrounding villages. Its architecture is typically Alsatian when taken as a whole, and if to-day its life is that of a modern European city, it is so in a gay, typically Alsatian way.
    Colmar, Mulhouse and the other Alsatian towns present a similar picture on a smaller scale, while the villages with their striking rural architecture, their hardworking yet always cheery and hospitable inhabitants, are so many gems in the diadem of a beautiful country.
    Lorraine is similar to yet different from Alsace. Lorraine is a mixture of delicate half-tones and industrial realism. We need only mention the gentle poetry of the Moselle landscape, a scene of water, hills and sky. The magnificent panorama of the region of Abreschwiller and Dabo is difficult to forget once you have seen it.
    Lorraine also has its quiet urban charm, as for instance in Metz, which is intensely and charmingly French, despite the many traces of the German régime.
    The gracefulness of Nancy is another aspect of Lorraine’s urban charm.
    Finally, along the Moselle as far as Thionville, the tourist can see Industry in full blast. The geometrical architecture of the factories and blast furnaces is most impressive, and their red glow at night stabs the darkness like a triumphant song of achievement.

CORSICA
    Corsica may affect you in one of two ways. You may take away with you the impression of a barbarous island delivered up to a hoard of ruffianly blackguards and murderers, where bathrooms are strange rarities; or you may see it as the perfection of rugged beauty, the home of noble savages of great eloquence and amiability alone capable of producing a man of the stature of Napoleon.
Not Ev. Mod. Con.
    There is something in both conceptions of Corsica. If you really think bathrooms and cocktails are the hallmark of civilisation, you will be right enough in regarding the Corsicans as uncivilised. Despite recent strenuous efforts to bring the island into line with the requirements of the modern tourist,