ALAS!

Even a hundred years ago Mark Twains fellow innocent remembered Venice not for the Doge's Palace or the Grand Canal, but for the back cotton socks he bought there. Today the swarthy gondoliers are waging a last desperate struggle, with picketers instead of stilettos, to keep motor boat exhausts from barking all night at the inoffensive Venation moon. This malady of tourists gangrene which has brought railroads in to Venice and made Paris mostly English, is attacking the simple yodelers of the Swiss mountains.

The Great Saint Bernard hospice, long the stalking ground of Upidee and other inlaid ghosts of romantic legend, is giving up its ancient and abivairous custom of giving free fool and stirred to every weary pilgrim. It is said that the threadbare monks are stirred by the affluent cars and apparel of their humble guests to set up a hotel under a skilled extartioner; and that voluntary contributions have not sufficed to maintain the momstery. But the often fleeced American traveler is likely to suspect that the monks have found that the "Dine and Dance" electric flasher attracts the crowds more strongly than barrels of saints' rings and martyrs' knuckles.

But this development will not surprise the more sophisticated cosmopolitan for tuxedos have long since replaced the native costumes of Italy and Switzerland. Swiss watches have been manufactured in the United States for a score of years and the beautiful woodcarvings of Lucerne are said to be whittled in Hoboken.