A Tourist May Look at a King

Just Out!—A Guide to Switzerland—1919 Edition!

SCHUYLER LENOX

IT is my business to be alert. Long ago I decided that that was one of the essential pre-requisites of success. I think I learned it from an ad—"How to be a Success, in halfcalf, for one dollar" and it went on to mention, among other things, Alertness. That part of the blurb stuck. That I have achieved what of success has been my modest share, (I thank you), is due almost entirely to the fact that I have consistently practiced this one precious quality. What, might have been my meteoric career had I remembered any of the other desiderata mentioned, I blush to contemplate. However, so far as alertitude goes I'm there on all fours—so to speak, and I can prove it.

Immediately following the signing of the two armistii—the false and the true—by the way, as Omar says—"A hair, perchance, divides the false and true,"—and in this case it was simply a hair of the dog that bit me (bit me in the armistice, as you might say) I realized that all maps had gone by the board and that all the guide-books were back numbers.

HOW'S that for a neat little bit of alertness! The maps! Yes, I grant you any one could see that. People had been cracking their brains for weeks over newspaper layouts of Central Europa, nee Mittel, trying to find out whether an Esthonian was a Slav or a Slob and where the independent kingdom of Gonzabo came in —but the guide-books! well, I fancy I beat a good many people to it on that score.

In the first place, I immediately got in touch with Karl Baedeker, or with what is left of him. It did not take long to discover that he was more or less of a myth, like Lydia Pinkham, and that a very keen party named Oscar Plop of South Bend, Ill., had bought his interests from alien property-custodian-Palmer for a mere German song. Plop was more than glad to do business with me on my own terms.

Really, when I think of the number of people who will be going abroad in the next few months, the zealous reconstructionists, the eager-eyed, young red-crossers, the red-eyed, eager, young salesmen with patent portable houses, the engineers, the bankers, and so on, to say nothing of the thousands who are just crazy to get to the front and see what it all looks like—the same folk who always insist on viewing the remains at a funeral—when I think of them and of the tremendous sale my revised guide-books are bound to have, hon7 estly I hate to take the money—almost.

I BEGAN with Switzerland for obvious reasons, particularly because, so far as I can ascertain, it is the only country in the touristworld that isn't going to have something done to its boundaries. France, blessed France, Mother of Liberty, is expecting an addition to her family. Italy too, is in a very interested condition; Turkey is about to go on the operating table and have her Dardanelles removed —in fact, all the European countries are in a state of flux and change and creation except Switzerland, the land of the cuckoo-clock and the house of the hob-nail.

Moreover—though why I say it I know not —Switzerland has always been the mecca of tourists. I suppose the Meccans say "Mecca has always been the Switzerland of the faithful", or words to that effect. Both are true. Therefore, said I to myself and Plop—"Switzerland it is"—and it was.

Dearie me, how the old order changeth! One glance at the ancient ante-bellum handbooks and I saw what a tremendous task lay before me. You, Reader, doubtless knew your

Switzerland in the old days, when, Alpinestock in-hand and yodel in-face, we fell past each other on different floors of the Mer de Glace—you remember, do you not, that there were hotels there, magnificent hostelries at Lucerne, Geneva and Interlaken which people travelled thousands of miles to see? and the Kursaals, and Kermesses and Kindergartens and shops and bands and mineral springs!

SURELY, you remember them, and, O yes, ...the mountains! I had almost forgotten the mountains. Do you remember them, —great hulking things, crowding about one, crushing one with their tremendous bulk and hideous teutonic names—the Pifflealp and the Gotterdammerhorn and all the rest of them. Ugh! How glad I am all that has been done away with.

Yes, Reader, the mountains, as such, are a thing of the past. They have no longer any publicity value, as we say at the Lambs Club. Their place has been completely usurped by extinct monarchs.

It was this, in particular, that made it so necessary for me to re-write practically the entire volume devoted to the land of the peek-aboo cheese. Of course, I found a few passages of the old version which can stand. For instance, in the preface, the following quotation reads as if almost inspired by a fore-knowledge of events to come:

"With improved facilities for travel, the number of visitors to Switzerland has greatly increased in late years, and mountaineering ambition has been proportionately stimulated. Summits once deemed well-nigh inaccessible are now scaled annually by travellers from all parts of the world."

I QUOTE textually. By the simple substitution of "monarchs" for "travellers" the paragraph is brought up to date in a most vivid manner. For how true it is! I have been told by my correspondent in Davosplatz— Plop's brother, Hugo, who tends bar in the Hotel Scheedinkle and whom you probably remember.

Hugo says that when Count Von Klutz, the Land-crab of Hesse, late of Prussia, arrived from the Western front, he shot out of his automobile with such speed that he completely eluded the twenty-three local hotel-keepers who were at the station to meet him, and, before their astounded eyes, accomplished, in twentytwo minutes, what the Swiss guides for generations had struggled in vain to achieve—namely the ascent of the Sauerhom, a precipitous monolith or "pic" some two thousand feet high. Moreover, Hugo writes, the distinguished visitor refuses to come down. He seems perfectly satisfied where he is, pulls his meals up in a basket, and there he sits, allteed-up like a golf-ball, waiting for the next drive.

So it goes, all over the shop. Practically every mountain of any consequence-has its monarch; every emperor has his own private alp,—a peak for every one and every one on his peak, is the new Swiss idea. They are a practical lot, you know, these mountaineers, and have worked out the details ingeniously and thoroughly. Their royal visitors are graded on mountains of different heights corresponding to their rank; the higher the title the higher the Alp. Just at present the highest of all is being reserved for an extinguished visitor who is expected to arrive at any moment, via Holland and who, long before this article sees the light, will probably have taken his place on the sharp point of the Matterhorn.

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THIS arrangement of gradation by heights has made it simple for me to recast my guide-book, following closely the old structure and frame work evolved by my predecessors. Take, for instance, a simple example to begin with, one of the charming walks through the low hills near Zurich. The revised version (pub. 1919) reads as follows:

"From the Wittelberg to the AlbisBiedelbaum, a beautiful walk of three hours, ascending and descending on the Albis range. To the left is the ravine of the Spitz, beyond it, seated on a becoming hillock, the Count von Meeklenburg-Schwerin, whose last name can be distinctly heard from the hotel piazza."

You get the idea? Of course, the real chances to spread myself do not come until I get up among the six thousand foot boys.

The scale runs as follows:

Title Altitude

German nobility.2,000to 3,000 ft.

Prussian nobility.3,000 to 4,000 ft.

All Turks, except one.4,500 to 5,000 ft.

Assorted diplomats...4,500to 5,000ft.

Members of General

Staff................6,000 to 7,000 ft.

Monarchs (fine

mixed)............7,000 and upwards

Note:, Heights are given in English feet.

UP to and including the General Staff, the trips are possible without special training or equipment. Beyond this altitude, however, I must warn the uninitiated against any attempted climb without proper precautions and a rigorous course of preliminary excursions among the less strenuous ascents.

A glance at my book, p. 86, describing the trip from Lauterblitz to Mumpz will give an idea of the thought and care I have given to this subject,

** Lauterblitz, a charming village at the foot of the Blatz valley, a good foot-path ascends in bold curves as far as Fatima (4 M.) where guides (Allenby, Maude) should be secured before continuing the stiff climb to Mumpz (7,259 ft.). This is an interesting

scramble for steady-headed mountaineers whose labors are rewarded by a magnificent view of the Sultan sitting on the Jungfrau, which has always been his favorite sport. The Sultan occupies an exposed position, large parts of him being covered with eternal snow. (Funicular railway on south side—Fare 2 fr.) Twenty minutes walk from Mumpz, at Bumplatz, one catches a glimpse of the great Monarchial Range, towering above lower hills. Truly a magnificent sequence, Constantinerberg, Ferdinanderstock, the jagged Karlhorn, each appropriately crowned with its uncrowned monarch, forming what has been called the last Hindenburg Line. Travellers are warned not to approach nearer than five miles from this range without gasmasks and a proper supply of hand-grenades as, even in their extinct state, these mountains are not to be trusted, (Guides—Foch, Pershing, Haig.)

Hotel des Allids, July 14th to November 11th—200 beds at 3½-6; Pens. 6-8 fr. (special dishes for dyspeptics).

NEEDLESS to say, I have been very thorough in my compilation, and while covering all the mountains in detail, I have not neglected the less arduous and possibly more romantic localities, charming old Chillon, for instance, whose lowest sub-marine dungeon now reverberates to the roar of a person named Von Tirpitz—and the amusing Bear-pit at Berne where thousands of people flock daily to roar at the antics of the trained Princes who have replaced the bears, and who climb poles and fall off and otherwise delight the public.

Thus, you see, by being alert, I have gotten a tremendous start on my competitors. My entire first edition is sold.