HINDRANCE TO TRAVEL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 89, 3 February 1947, Page 5

HINDRANCE TO TRAVEL

PASSPORT REQUIREMENTS ABOLITION URGED To look backwards is seldom either profitable or enjoyable. Yet I suggest we, in 1947, should cast a glance over the shoulders for a moment at 1914, and recall what Tourist Freedom was like in Western Europe before the first World War, says Sir Frederick W. Ogilvie, in “Coming Events,” an English publication. You wanted to travel? Very well, you went to your railway station, and you took your ticket for your chosen destination abroad. And that, for most countries, was that. Passports? Oh yes, you had read about them in history books. Visas? You had never heard of them. Currency Control? How absurd! Why, most of the western countries were in the Latin Currency Union, exchanging freely at 25.22 to the £. You simply had to take what money you liked and change it at known rates as you went along. Customs there were, of course, a nuisance to sometimes. But it was a friendly business on the whole. The tourist was still a tourist, not a potential enemy. How unreal it all seems at this distance! How'unreal, and also how enviable. We do well to remind ourselves from time to time that there ever was such freedom. When freedom of movement was lost to tourists in 1914, something precious and of high importance went out of our world. But we cannot recapture 1914. Nor should we try to. Our focus and our tasks lie ahead. Atlantic Charter The Atlantic Charter speaks in one place of arriving at a Peace which “should euable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans, without hindrance. To the high seas and oceans adds the words “And all lands” and you have .a fair statement of the objectives of the Tourist movement today. Work for the tourist movement, if it is to be effective, cannot be undertaken by countries in isolation. One country may wish to set its tourist traffic at liberty, saying to its own Nationals “Go” and to the National of other countries “Welcome.” But without reciprocity by other countries such action is void. Freedom to travel means nothing without freedom to arrive. And open doors are a sorry farce if people are not allowed by their own Governments to enter them. And what of the present hindrances to tourist traffic? Let us be honest, and continue to call Passports and suchlike “Hindrances.” For my own part I decline to be w«eedled into calling them “Facilities.” Cost In Time Passports, unlike national identity cards, are not issued to everyone, but only to those who apply for them. They are valid for a certain period only. They cost money. And they cost time—hours, days, or sometimes even weeks of waiting. It is for us all to ask in our respective countries—How far are passports still necessary at all? And if they are necessary, how far can the process of getting them be simplified and cheapened and speeded up. Can more use be made of other systems? Group Passports, for example, for parties travelling under approved societies or agencies Of National Identity cards suitably re-cast, perhaps with the mark of the country of origin on the outside. But of course it would be great innocence to imagine that a Passport enables a man to pass. In many countries he needs an Exit Permit first. And then, though he may leave his own country, he probably cannot enter-anotheivwithout the other country’s visa. More forms, more expense, more queues, and more delays. In Britain at present, visas of entry are not granted to Tourists as such, presumably because of our lack of accommodation, our transport difficulties and shortage of food. But for other categories of visitors, particulai’ly for business men and students, visa regulations have been considerably eased. And for 1947 the Government has already announced that it hopes to have British visas freely available for tourists. Some countries have begun to abolish visas altogether.