Deck Chairs Ahoy!

Like a child about to go on his first picnic, the American President Lines could hardly contain itself. On April 16, it exuberantly announced, it will resume round-the-world cruises. They will be in the old luxurious "Dollar Line" tradition (but at a new price of $2,213.75, including Government tax, an increase of almost 50%).

What pleased the President Lines even more was the number of customers who could hardly wait to climb aboard, see the wonders of 23 ports of call in 14 countries. There are already more than 1,000 paid-up reservations, and an estimated 10,000 passengers who want to make one or more legs of the cruise.

Cooks & Canned Music. Ships are the problem--not passengers. Of the fleet of seven new cruise ships which the Navy took over during the war, the Government-controlled but privately operated line has so far gotten back only two: the President Monroe, which will sail on the first postwar pleasure cruise, and the President Polk, which will sail on May 2. Each has accommodations--all first class--for only 98 passengers. So tickets are being rationed to one person or one couple from each state per ship.

The chosen few will find that they are not traveling around the prewar world, nor in the prewar way. Passengers will not be encouraged to stay ashore overnight in the Orient. And no more can they stop over anywhere they like, catch the next ship that strikes their fancy. Out are such favorite prewar diversions as getting off at Kobe, going by rail and small boat to Korea, then to Peiping to see the Temple of Heaven, then buzzing down to gaudy Shanghai to pick up the same Dollar liner they left at Kobe.

Ozone & Indigestion. Nowhere will going ashore be the fun it used to be. In Honolulu, food is scarce, as are rooms in the newly reopened Royal Hawaiian Hotel (on famed Waikiki Beach); auto rental rates are $30 for the first day, $20 for each day thereafter. Yokohama and Kobe are cities of beaten peoples, littered streets.

In Shanghai, prices are out of sight; dollars must be exchanged into Chinese at 1 to 12,000 (less 3% Government Bank commission), and unspent Chinese dollars cannot be changed back. Manila is still a rubble heap. Hong Kong is nearer normal than any Far Eastern city. Prices are well controlled. A hotel room costs only $2 to $3 a person. Singapore is smellier, more overcrowded than ever. But the famed Raffles Hotel is open again to tourists--although they may find it too quaint to be comfortable.

In Europe they will find things somewhat better. But not enough to pay for the trouble of going all the way around the world. What is the lure? One prewar tripper put it this way: "First, the fun of spending money. . . . Then there is the incontrovertible fact, proved by postcards, snapshots, movie reels and the labels on their baggage, that [the globe-girdlers] have actually circumnavigated the globe. . . . Then they get four months of bridge, of comparing notes, prices and scandal with new friends delightfully like themselves, a lot of good ozone, offset by more or less continuous indigestion from rich food, liquor and lack of the exercise to which they are accustomed; innumerable Things Seen which will make them authorities not to be contradicted by the stay-at-homes for a long time to come; the sensation of having gone somewhere and returned in clever safety to their starting point."

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