In Europe — exhausted by the events of the late war, and still in the stage of repair and recon-struction thanks to the Marshall Plan — the tourism and summer-ing season of this year (1950) is counted the greatest season Europe has known so far, and the most abundant in material profit. American tourists to Western Europe number three hundred and fifty thousand, and American tourism in Britain, France, and Italy is the greatest resource of a Europe thirsty for dollars, for these Americans spend there no less than two hundred and twenty million dollars, apart from the costs of travel across the ocean.

Last year the Americans spent in Switzerland alone fifteen million dollars, and most likely they will spend a larger sum this year. As for Britain, tourism has yielded her quantities of dollars exceeding any sum she obtains from selling wools, whisky, and motor-cars to the United States. The experts and those in charge of the plan for the reconstruction of Europe among the delegates of the United Nations expect the tourist seasons, throughout the life of the Marshall Plan, to add a sum of one thousand five hundred million dollars to the aid coming through that plan.

For America's present policy aims at encouraging tourism in Europe, out of a desire to help her to rise again. This was one of the objects of the Holy Year in Italy: for the Americans and others, when they come to Rome on pilgrimage or as tourists, do not content themselves with that visit, but turn aside to Britain and France and then push on into Switzerland and Austria after passing through Holland, Belgium, and Spain.

There is no doubt that Britain attracts the American tourist more than any other country, given the bonds of language and blood that tie the two peoples together, and that half the American tourists who visit Europe this year pass first through Britain. And yet we find that the American tourist who stays eighteen days in London stays twenty days or more in Paris. For Paris has been the Mecca of tourists from of old — Americans and Europeans alike.

Paris, "forever adorned to receive her lovers," tempts them to stay, so that they cannot break free; they part from her only reluctantly, promising themselves to return. Paris is the city of learning, of art, and of pleasure. Seekers of learning and art make for her, as do seekers of amusement, luxury, pleasure, and beauty — until the number of her visitors, tourists and students and the like, rivals the number of her inhabitants.

She is furnished with the full equipment that fits her to play this unique threefold role in the world. Her building began in the Roman era in France — that is, two thousand years ago. The kings of France contributed to her building, from Louis IX down to Napoleon and Louis-Philippe. It is as though an unbroken chain of kings, great men, and artists had labored together for two thousand years to beautify Paris, until she became the capital of art and the city of beauty.

The first thing that strikes your eye in Paris is the breadth of the city and the breadth of her buildings, streets, and avenues. She is the carpet-city, stretched out to infinity; the city of the Seine, which divides her in two, gives her soil fertility, and adorns her with woods and groves: Boulogne, Vincennes, the Jardin des Plantes, the Luxembourg gardens, the Tuileries, the Champs-Élysées, the Trocadéro. It adorns her broad streets and long avenues with tall trees of spreading shade, and you feel that Paris is fortunate not only in the matter of art but also in that of natural beauty, which her people turn to the very best account.

The weather is changeable, shifting suddenly from intense heat to rain, and in Paris you cannot do without a raincoat even in the last days of summer. But the climate is dry, and one may say it is healthful. You cannot fail to notice the dimness of the air in the city — they do not have the sharp sun of the East — and the dimness of the old buildings and walls, and of the rooms hung about with curtains, into which only a faint light penetrates, spreading a solemn awe and stirring dreams. That is because most of the buildings were built of a dull-colored stone which the passage of time has made duller and blacker still. Rarely do you find a white-walled building, apart from some modern ones, like the Palais de Chaillot. But the beholder's soul finds rest in the order and arrangement all around it; this pervading order steals into the soul from the streets and the buildings, so that you sense a harmony among all its parts, and a new feeling takes possession of you — the feeling of one who has touched beauty, through whom a quiet breath has passed and permeated his whole being. Then I understood what one of the charming Parisiennes said to me: "Here we have no need to study the principles of beauty. It is born