Years ago (when France and Germany began the great war of 1869-70) I travelled from Geneva to Chamonix by coach. It took the whole day. Now I and my companion, avoiding the railway, were driven in a motor-car past Bonneville, Cluses, and Sallanches (with its famous view of Mont Blanc), and along the vale of Chamonix to its far end above Argentière in less than three hours. Here we stayed a few days in the Hôtel du Planet, at a height of 4500 feet, in order to enjoy the sight of the meadows and woodland flowers. I may add that in this quiet hotel the proprietor gave us simple, good food, well cooked, which is more than I can say of the large hotels on the lakes and popular resorts, such as Geneva, Montreux, Glion, and Interlaken, where I have carefully inquired into the kitchen arrangements and food supplies. The latter barrack-like edifices have of late years become intolerable owing to the mechanical supply to them (by a group of monopolist financiers who have acquired the contract) of the nastiest ice-stored fish, meat, and vegetables. These are heated in their kitchens with bottled sauces in patent ovens by underpaid scullery-helps, without the superintendence of a qualified "cook." The result is a sham--pretentious and inedible--which yields a fine profit to the hotel companies, and is erroneously believed by the travelling crowds of to-day to be French cookery! In reality it is a new device for bringing the "catering" in all hotels in the great holiday centres under a monopolist control. The scheme is similar to that to which the continental railway companies have yielded in leasing to a well-known company the restaurant and sleeping arrangements on their trains, with the result of causing much misery to travellers and profit to themselves and to the monopolists.