EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 50, 27 January 1938, Page 2

EUROPE TO-DAY

THE WAY TO ITALY,

Let us travel from Charing Cross to Turin.

Behind the Alps is Italy. We have to make our way through a hole eight miles long, half a mile above the sea and half a mile beneath the earth, and as we glide into the tunnel we say farewell to France, because we know that when we see the sun again, in half an hour or less, it will be in Italy. Through lovely valleys, over viaducts thrown across deep ravines, along the slopes of huge mountains and on the edge of' huge precipices, past pretty waterfalls, through tunnels that serve to freshen up the scene when we come out again—everywhere is a sense, not only of the wonder of the earth, but of the power of man to fashion the earth to his will. It is one long panorama of beauty and power, and it is fitting that we should come thus to Turin, _ for Turin has to offer the traveller a sight that hardly any city can surpass. We break our journey here, for we have come six hundred miles from Paris, and nearly nine hundred miles from Charing Cross, iand we have travelled nearly thirty hours.. The one thing we do in Turin is to take the little funicular railway and climb to a height where travellers come a thousand miles to stand. Here lie the kings of Sardinia, in a. tomb fit for kings, and fit for better men than most of these; but we bother little about the tombs, for in front of us and around us are the Alps, hundreds of miles of Alps, set up there for us to see them at a glance, with their snowy peaks in the clouds a hundred miles away. —(G)