The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-11-29
Experiences
 Going From
 Criimea To Riga

I 1 impatient newspaper man starts on 1 the trip he finds central Europe an 1 uncharted world, roughly remade by | tne versailles treaty and infested by ] hostlfe armies, troublesome passport ! officials and annoying customs agents | who seem to be located where they l eaten trains at o'clock in the morn 1 ing. (This dispatch recites the ex- per1ences of one of the staff cores pondents of The Associated Press sent 1 to Riga for the recent Russian-Polish | peace conference).
 In Latvia every sixteenth person is l a government emp1oye. There are | only million and half inhabitants | all told in the new republic and 25, 900 or them work for the government.
 The same proportion probably holds | for most of the other newly-hatched
 chicks which are seeking the shelter | Of Mother League of Nations over ! stretched wings, with the result that l the wandering business man and re- porter have to suffer.
 1 It requires fourteen visas to get from Sebastapol to Riga, together with scores of government papers en- ablfnS travellers to carry more than three collars and SIS from one boun- l dary to another. When the new coun- l tries find nothing else to do they pass | additional travel and export regu1a- 1 tis ~s and thus afford work for a few l score more inspectors and investigat- orS.
 After I had finished my work with | the Wrangel army and the officials | of the South Russian government, I started back to Constanttnople, which | is the only center from which travel | Is possible into Central Europe. Blu denny and Pet1ura and Makhno and | a score of other Bo1shevist, anti-Bol l shevist and anti-everybody leaders
 tween Wrangers northern line and | Warsaw, The trip might have been | made in an airplane, but most of the l Russian airp1anes have developed So- l S1 | ton many hours in succession, so | turned to a trusted American des- troyer. the Tattnall. which speeded
 me over to Constanza. Rumania, and | forty-eight hours. I was semf-ofncial on the ship and free from passport
 regulations But at Constantinople 1 the grind began.
 pest. Railway strikes and disturbed 1 lines made that impossible. In fact, | there was only one rail route which ! was certainly in operation-that was | the line through Sofia and Belgrade | to T1fese. It was probably possible to go from there to Vienna and the
 sailing was clear through Prague to 1 Berlin, but nobody south of Berlin | had ever heard of Latvia, and very slight interest was shown in anybody who was foolish enough to want to
 get into any part n of old Russia, R s,lno,e ts
 that of visa-getter. I engaged the best wrangler of visas in Constanti- nopIe, and after two days he advised me that with the assistance of letters from Admiral Bristol and the Amer ican consul he had been able to ob- tain all of the visas necessary to go to Berlin excepting the French. l had to go to the French control person ally and waited five hours in line with Senega1ese, Chinese, Azerbaidjanese, Portuguese and every brand Of Lev
 antine before French military red tape granted me permission to leave Constantinople.
 Additional sheets were pasted on
 my passport and I found myself in
 possession of the most amazing col lection of official documents I had three Greek visaS. They were neces- sary to carry me across the section of Thrace which the supreme council has given to Greece, One of the visaS was from the Greek high commits sioner Another from the Greek con su1 and a third from the Greek mln-
 tary command. I had the seal of all the entente military controls, of Bulgaria, Jugo-Slavia, Czecho-Slov- akia, Italy, Austria and Germany. Many of them charged $10 for the visa in retaliation for the charge the American congress has fixed for an American visa.
 went to sleep with my baggage keys in my hand and started on the steeplechase over frontiers. The train
 was scarcely well started before I hit the Greeks, and for three days l got abundant exercise opening ana clos l ing luggage, and assuring officials didn't have more than 100 cigarettes | The quest for cigarettes seems to be
 the favorite pastime in the Balkans At Trieste I had to wait two days for a train and consumed most of the time hurrying up a visa-getter who tried to make the task of get ting me through the Italian police control appear to be extremely difn- cult. I also amused myself shopping Il, oIooT n to get my odd assortment of rubles, francs, piasters. leis and drachmas converted into Austrian crowns. There were only six sets of customs officials to pass between Trieste and Berlin. As there were no sleeping cars, the frontiers were not especial 1 ly annoying. One gets used to any l thing.
 1 In the matter of travel information, Berlin is further from the new Bal 1 kans on the Baltic sea than Zambo- anga- The travel agencies didn't know how to get to Riga Yes, there were ships from stettin sometimes 1 Also from Danzig-possibly. It had been rumored there were trains
 but the war had been resumed. 1 Somebody was fighting somebody else, somewhere, and military passes were
 probably necessary. one went to i 117otorcard to Libau, but there gener- | ally wasn't any petrol. The railroads | were out of coal, but sometimes they
 ran with wood if they could get it | cut and could induce their disabled 1 loc0~72 olives to work.
 1 There was nothing to do but start | In lacc, that is all one can do almost 1 anywhere in Europe today. And it is safe to conceal plenty of expense 1 money in ones clothing and trust to | luck that the customs officials won't l take it if they find it. Berlin was filled
 with correspondents trying to find | way to get to the Riga peace con- | ference. They tried various routes, l but I managed to get there ahead of | most of them by taking the train | to the Lithuanian frontier. I was l thrown back by the military control,