Cheap Excursion Fares.

Passenger travel in Britain will this season receive an immense stimulus by reason of the exceptionally low fares which are being quoted by the group lines for holiday journeys. Fast, long-distance excursion bookings, giving express travel for something like one half-penny a mile, are a sure bait for the vacationist, and are reminiscent of the remarkably cheap fares operating in pre-war days.

Before the war the ordinary third-class fare in Britain was a penny a mile, while during the holiday season cheap fares were quoted at as low as one farthing a mile. Time was when one could travel from London to York and back, 377 miles, for three-and-sixpence, but this was during a keen rate war when competing routes were fighting madly for traffic, and it was not long before saner methods were introduced to avert bankruptcy.

On the continent of Europe, remarkably cheap fares were, in pre-war days, in operation, notably in Germany and Belgium. The German third-class fare worked out at three-fifths of a penny a mile; while in Belgium a five-day third-class ticket, covering 3,000 miles of travel, could be procured for ten shillings and sixpence, or a fifteen day ticket providing for unlimited travel over the Belgian State Railways for eighteen shillings and tenpence. Cheapter still was the fare of fifteen shillings quoted by the Trans-Siberian Railway, covering conveyance from Petrograd to any point up to and including Vladivostock, a distance of 4,000 miles. This booking was probably the lowest fare ever quoted by any railway. It had as its aim the stimulation of agricultural settlement in Asiatic Russia.