THE BUTCHER'S BILL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 269, 13 November 1935, Page 6

THE BUTCHER'S BILL.

SLAUGHTER ON THE ROADS. (By J.C.) It is a tragic paradox of modern road traffic that the more perfect the highway is the greater is the danger, and the greater the loss of life. Even some prominent motorists themselves are beginning to realise this, and, what is more, to admit it publicly. Moreover, a leading member of tiie Wellington Automobile Association stated this week that in his opinion speed on the best highways was the cause of the greatest number of accidents. lie described the death roll on the roads as carnage and a sort of civil war. He could with truth have gone much further and described it as murder. In the first six month's of this year there were nearly a hundred deaths in motor road traffic in* New .Zealand. Were this slaughter to occur in any other form of traffic or in any industry, there would be a horrified demand for inquiry and reform and drastic punishment of. those to blame. Lut in motoring the death aid mutilation lists mount up steadily without any adequate attempt to limit or reduce it. the police and traffic inspectors do their best, but their efforts are powerless in the face of the popular craze for motoring and the constant demand for more and more facilities for speeding and the continual objection to regulations designed to slow down the mad rush. The chief traffic inspector in Wellington has reported that excessive speed is the cause of most of the motoring accidents, 'i fact is obvious to those who take note of the daily accident lists. The drunken driver is not the greatest danger on the road. The worst offender is the man —or woman —who regards the public highway as a kind of playground and racetrack. The demand "for smooth roads, polished to a glassy surface, has brought its curse with it. The making of these tratlicways has in every country produced a breed of motorists who are impatient of all restraints on their lunatic desire to outpace everything else on the roads. Traffic regulations are to them an unreasonable interference with their right to do as they please wherever they travel. And when they tire caught* and brought before the Court, the customary attitude of magistrates and justices of the peace towards their offences is absurdly lenient.

Loss of Child Life. I Accidents at railway crossings are invari- j ably the fault of- the motorist. He is either too careless to keep a look-out, or is too reckless to obey the plain warning at the crossing. Kven when he sees the train coming, he tries to beat it. and he deserves all he gets. Unfor- | tunafcly the innocent passengers arc often the J sufferers. But the most shocking aspect of j the highways butcher's bill is the loss of child life. Infants who attempt to cross a roiul are blamed as if they were adults. It is atrocious to place the onus on the little child. If a driver is not sufficiently attentive to his job to keep clear of children lie should not be on the road at all. The responsibility is his. There is a terr'ble indifference to the value of these young lives cut short. The cure for this carnage on the roads and streets is simple enough, if the Government, the local bodies nnd the magistrates are sufficiently courageous to apply it. First of all, the legislation requires a drastic revision, in the direction of imposing greater restraints on reckless users of the highway, and greater punishments for offenders. Men who deserve prison must not escape with a small fine. Less money should be spent on making smooth the way of the road racer and more on inspection and supervision and detection of offenders against the safety of the public. Xo offender convicted of a serious breach of the law should bo allowed to use a car again; he should be warned off permanently. Anyone who drives at an excessive speed on the roads does so deliberately; he deserves imprisonment, besides the confiscation of his car, not the farcical procedure of a summons and a trifling fine. Prolinlily half the people who drive motor_ ears should not be at the wheel at all. The fact that they were able to buy a car (or owe for it) and to satisfy the council's driving inspector sufficiently to obtain a license, does not necessarily imply that they are fit to be let loose on the roads. They should be travelling by train or bus. or in ar.y other way that docs not entrust them with the control of a death-dealing machine. The moderate-paced and careful bodv of motorists suffer in reputation through the other people's default.

DECLINE OF PATIENCE. The cinema and the radio have been blamed for so many things —from the collapse i of morals to the decline of conversation —that it is quite a relief to find at last some ease from which they can be dismissed without a stain on their characters (says the "Manchester Guardian"). Tho game of patience, accordin" to a statement from a firm which manufactures playing cards, is losing favour with the public, and the demand for the miniature packs of patience cards is falling off. What lias beguiled tho patience players from their solitary pastime? The answer is surprising. "More and more people are taking to contract bridge." The uninstructed observer might have set down contract bridge as the least likely of ali games to tempt the devotee of patience. No card game is more arduous, more nerve-racking, more tense with personal opposition, than contract; patience, on the other hand, is pre-eminent as a calm and soothing pastime. One can imagine being seduced from the contemplative pleasures of "Miss Milligan" or "Fan Patience" by the easy charms of whist, which (whatever Charles Lamb may have said about "the rigour of the game") is to contract as fox-and-geese is to chess. But the chasm between "Miss Milligan" and contract seems rJmost unbridgeable. It is possible, however, that this vulgar view of patience is all wiong. Its expert exponents have always contended that it demands great powers of mental concentration if it is to be played with success; and they may now regard their case as proved. Until .contract was evolved, they will say, the whist-bridge family of games was not difficult. enough to attract the real patience player. In contract bridge he has found at last an alternative worthy of his powers.

BIBLE CONCORDANCE. Few men 'havo made such an intensive study "of "the" Bible as Alexander Cruden, who died in November, 1770. He seems to Lave been,an eccentric, but in the year 1735—just t\vo centuries ago —lie embarked upon the colossal task of promoting the study of the, Holy Scriptures by compiling a eoncoi dance in which every word appears alphabetically, and the various places where each word occurs is referred to. When he had finished this monumental task Cruden hastened off to present the first copy fo Queen Caroline. He seems to have built hopes on receiving some financial mark of the Royal favour, and the Queen, in graciously accepting the first;copy, assured the compiler that "she would not forget him." He went home in high hopes, but a few days later the Queen died, and he received nought. However, second and third editions were quickly called for, bringing him in some £200. To-day, two centuries later, Cruden's Concordance to the Bible is still the standard reference work. It is found in every library and in those of most clergymen. Its author died happy in the thought that he had left a work behind him which would commend his name to posterity.