TWO CITIES.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20905, 12 July 1933, Page 15

TWO CITIES.

TO TUB XDITO& 0* TES F3IM, Sir, —I hope the mob of common Gibeonites who do not own motorcars or cycles—l am one of that despised tribe—will for the good of their souls have read the letter from "Progress" in "The Press" of Monday. There they will learn from the writer, who has just returned from Australia, what a contemptible city Christchurch is as compared with Sydney. We are in a civic sense benighted and befuddled in a conservative lethargy that keeps us marking time in primeval crudities while leaving us in our dullness, "the great world spins forever down the ringing grooves of time." Well, well! It's a terrible indictment, but v/e find comfort in the fact that it is not true. Among the minor sins charged against us are: (1) We do not smile enough. (2) We do not provide receptacles in the streets for the random rubbish of the day—cigarette tins, matchboxes, etc. When "Progress" recovers his equipoise after his experi-1 ence on the rolling deep he will discover that Christchurch has as much capacity for laughter as ever, as much even as Sydney; but no friend of our city would ever suggest that whether there is occasion for feeling happy or not we should simulate happiness and] pretend to it. If Sydney has developed a Sydney grin in that way, it is her concern. We do not want to cultivate an insincere Christchurch grin. Let us admit that rubbish receptacles in the streets would be an improvement. But our streets are not so untidy as to cause comment, and I am doubtful if Sydney with her superior advantages can boast that her main streets are freer from rubbish than those of Christchurch. The major charges by "Progess" against our city deserve most attention. They constitute a piece of special pleading that the public should concede even more privileges to his Majesty the Motorist than have been already to him at the cost ot the public. Here "Progress" wails the motorist has to worry about "speed limits, cyclists, and the everlasting jay-walker." Now, if that be true it is very cruel and unjust. Clearly the streets and highways were meant and made for the motorists and none other. What right has the common cyclist or the commoner pedestrian to worry the motorist by getting on the highway at all? "Over there." "Progress" says approvingly, "every pedestrian has to look out for himself." A very sensible rule! Let it be introduced forthwith. Then the cyclist or pedestrian will learn that he ventures in the highway at his own peril. The motorist is not bound to look out for him, or try to avoid him. Perhaps, indeed, if a few stern motorists drove on in majesty, killing some hundreds of those odious, common people, it might impress us all that the highways belong to the motorists and no other wayfarers.

Our trams also come in for scornful disdain, principally because they inconvenience the motorists. Must we do away with our trams, too, as well as our cyclists and pedestrians, to give the motorists a fair run? I hope not, but I»realise that his Majesty the Motorist must be served at all costs. To come from irony to plain English, let me say that I have never read a more selfish letter in my life. I would wager that "Progress" owns a car, but whether he does or not his letter is a plea that regardless of all others the roadways should belong almost exclusively to motorists. What he says about one-way traffic streets suggests to me that if it were practicable we should provide a few roadways for motorists only. There, unchecked by speed limits or police, they would be allowed to run riot to their hearts' content. Of course, hundreds and hundreds ot them would be killed, but we would bear the loss with stout resignation. Finally, the sooner these would-be lords of creation get it into their noddles that the public will not be content to be their Gibeonites, hewers of wood, and drawers of water, or to build fine roadways in which they must not walk or cycle lest his Majesty the Motorist be offended, the sooner will common sense begin to glimmer through 'their dense clouds of egotism and self-sufficiency. —Yours, etc., VIATOR. July 11, 1933.