Palm to Palm

Proudly announced by the French Government's new Office Franc,ais du Tourisme in Manhattan was the opening, last week, of a new transAlpine railway linking smart Monte Carlo and Nice directly with Northern Italy, Switzerland, Germany.

Until very recently it was understood that the new line would be inaugurated by a handshake across the Franco-Italian frontier between President Gaston Doumergue and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. That would have been no more than appropriate--for unquestionably this de luxe Riviera route is of greater social importance than the trans-Pyrenean freight line recently opened by the King of Spain and the President of France (TIME, July 23). Unfortunately relations between France and Italy are just now so tense that at the last minute it was considered wiser to omit the gesture of a nation-to-nation handclasp across the frontier. Therefore M. Le President and Il Duce kept their too potent palms out of contact, last week, but sent their Ministers of Public Works to shake just an ordinary shake.

Shaker Giovanni Giuriati is a somewhat insignificant minion of Dictator Mussolini. But Shaker Andre Tardieu is one of the ablest, most forthright and least blatantly famed statesmen of France. Deftly M. Tardieu turned his complimentary speech to Signer Giuriati into an inoffensive but significant hint. Italy and France might differ, he said, in their political concepts and in the objects of their foreign policy; but surely they ought to unite in more and more projects of commercial benefit, such as this railway. "I hail these strong bands of steel," cried Andre Tardieu in emotional peroration, "as a new and active element in the organization of peace."

Potential travelers to the Riviera who think that they can ask every sort of question about the new route at the French Government's Office du Tourisme, No. 4 East 52nd St., Manhattan, may be piqued to discover that certain quaint and prudent conditions are imposed. In an "authorized and official" French Government release it is stated: "Any legitimate questions regarding travel in France, sent to this bureau in good faith will receive quick attention and reply."

Sternest purists applauded this firm, stand against illegitimate questions about France, asked in bad faith.