The Holbrook news., 1921-03-25

1t stopped anywhere when it got tired.
 There was no food aboard, and pas
 sengers bartered socks, shoes and clothing to the peasants for bread and meat, as paper money was not accept able
 There was no railroad train to Czecho-Slovakia for a long time and no communication by boat along the Danube. When traffic did begin spas medically, savage customs officials met travellers at the frontiers and treated them to bodily search for money and
 valuables, herding them like cattle and hurling their luggage violently about
 In Germany railroad traffic was bet ter, but there were few trains and no through service. Such trains as did run were shamefully crowded. They were unheateG and sometimes even unlighted. It was only about a year ago that one of the infrequent trains which left Vienna in the direction of Switzerland had accommodations for 35o, but 800 or more crowded into 1t.
 People were damned into it like cattle being shipped to the packing house. In fact. everywhere throughout Central Europe travelling, when possible at all, meant delay. discomfort and peril.
 Improvement Is Marked.
 Such was the situation in 1919, but new the improvement, which has been gradual and imperceptible perhaps to persons of a single experience, Is marked. Clean, comfortable trains with dining car service run between Buda- pest and Vienna in about five hours; there is through train to Berlin by way of Prague in fifteen and a half hours and other through trains with sleeping cars to Rome, Trieste and Warsaw. One has the choice of two direct routes from London to Vienna and Vienna to London by way of eith- CT Calais or Ostend. The traveller to England can even take a day coach in Vienna and not be compelled to leave it 1ntil he has to board the channel boat.
 Tn Berlin, city ticket offices which were closed not so long ago will now sell tickets through to London, to Paris, to Rome, to Vienna or to War saw. train which leaves Berlin at eight in the morning will put you into London next morning at 10 80, by way of the Hook of Holland. German sleeping accommodations. with two persons in a compartment, which were eagerly sought not long ago (and did not exist at all immediately following the armistice) are now regarded as second-class. A first class ticket calls for a whole compartment, the upper berth being unused.
 There still remain imbecilities of customs inspections and occasional rudeness; there is the annoyance of having to buy new tickets at some frontiers in the money of the country entered and there is the surprise of having Polish money refused for a fare on a train in Polish territory, but everywhere there has been ameliOra tion of the Reorganization which fol- lowed the armistice and a tending to- ward the normal.
 If one is not too eXacting or petu lant he may now travel over Europe in comfort. And amazingly cheaply by American standards. Two persons who recently journeyed from London to Vienna, to Budapest. back to Vienna, to Prague, to Warsaw. to Danzig, to Berlin and to London. accomplished the trip of a months duration at an expense for both, including hotel bills, | of approximately $350
 If traffic and transportation cOndi- | tons are slowly becoming better, so too are political relations improving. |
 Signs of Returning Order.
 These are some of the symptoms of order gradually. very gradually. re- itself There are still huge problems of reconstruction that must be met. difficult adjustments that prust be made. There will certainly be nOre minor eruptiOns before there is a settling down, but there must be beginning of all things. and, comparing the present with what existed in the very near past. one cannot fail to re mark a tangible structure emerging gut of the general wreckage.
 The tI.oughtleSS. who expected that he lislocatiOns of war would be as rom ones hands, betray ignorance of he duration of natural processes, and he .Jeremiahs whose mouths are filled with IamentatiOn take so much joy in the glittering shell of lead tyranny that they fail to note The lesitating beginnings of new free lom.