FILCHING THE PARKS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 116, 20 May 1925, Page 9

FILCHING THE PARKS

A few years ago Hyde Park, in ihs heart of the city, was one of the beauty spots of Sydney. With its great! stretches of velvety lawns, its trees and walks, its delightful flower beds, it was to the public what an oasis is to the man; whoplunges into the desert, a delightfully fertile spot in a wilderness of bricks and mortar. Something of its origlna* beauty it still retains, but the delighta of its form and colour had to be sacri-i ficed for the exigencies of the City Raili way, and to-day great unsightly, mounds right down the centre of the park con« stitute the track of the proposed underground railway. Now, to crown thia disfigurement, there is the suggestion of the Labour caucus in the City Council that Hyde Park would be an admirablo, , site for the proposed new municipal library. The. proposal" has evoked the) adverse criticism of those who see tha open spaces gradually' being filched front the public, but the Labour Party in. the City Council to-day is-omnipotent, and nobody knows what it wilJ do next. It is at the expense of the city ratepayers that the free municipal library, one of the finest libraries of it* kind "in the world, is being maintained, but ther^ are not a few who already" think it is art unfair burden, -without putting up a new; costly piis in Hyde Park, seeing that in is patronised almost wholly by peopla living outside the city proper, and is, properly speaking, a State library, in which one can borrow all the latest fiction and other works for nothing. Tha Public Library and the Mitchell Xib* rary are distinct institutions.