The tourist trade is booming. With all thiscoming and going, you’d expect greater understanding to develop between thenations of the world. Not a bit of it! Superb systems of communication by air,sea and land make it possible for us to visit each other’s countries at amoderate cost. What was once the ‘grand tour’, reserved for only the very rich,is now within everybody’s grasp. The package tour and chartered flights are notto be sneered at. Modern travelers enjoy a level of comfort which the lords andladies on grand tours in the old days couldn’t have dreamed of. But what’s thesense of this mass exchange of populations if the nations of the world remainbasically ignorant of each other?

Many tourist organizations are directlyresponsible for this state of affairs. They deliberately set out to protecttheir clients from too much contact with the local population. The moderntourist leads cosseted, sheltered life. He lives at international hotels, wherehe eats his international food and sips his international drink while he gazesat the natives from a distance. Conducted tours to places of interest arecarefully censored. The tourist is allowed to see only what the organizers wanthim to see and no more. A strict schedule makes it impossible for the touristto wander off on his own; and anyway, language is always a barrier, so he isonly too happy to be protected in this way. At its very worst, this leads to anew and hideous kind of colonization. The summer quarters of the inhabitants ofthe cite universities: are temporarily re-established on the island of Corfu.Blackpoll is recreated at Torremolinos where the traveler goes not to eatpaella, but fish and chips.

The sad thing about this situation is thatit leads to the persistence of national stereotypes. We don’t see the people ofother nations as they really are, but as we have been brought up to believethey are. You can test this for yourself. Take five nationalities, say, French,German, English, American and Italian. Now in your mind, match them with thesefive adjectives: musical, amorous, cold, pedantic, native. Far from providingus with any insight into the national characteristics of the peoples justmentioned, these adjectives actually act as barriers. So when you set out onyour travels, the only characteristics you notice are those which confirm yourpreconceptions. You come away with the highly unoriginal and inaccurateimpression that, say, ‘Anglo-saxons are hypocrites’ or that ‘Latin peoplesshout a lot’. You only have to make a few foreign friends to understand howabsurd and harmful national stereotypes are. But how can you make foreignfriends when the tourist trade does its best to prevent you?

Carried to an extreme, stereotypes can bepositively dangerous. Wild generalizations stir up racial hatred and blind u tothe basic fact—how trite it sounds! –that all people are human. We are allsimilar to each other and at the same time all unique