FILCHING THE PARKS,

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 27 May 1925, Page 9

FILCHING THE PARKS,

• PROTESTS IN SYDNEY

SYDNEY, May 15. A few years ago Hyde Park, jn the heart of the city, was one of the beauty spots of Sydney. "With its great stretchbs of velvety lawns, its trees and walks, its delightful flower beds, it was to the public, what an oasis is to the man who plunges into the desert, a delightfully fertile spot in the wilderness of bricks and mortar. Something or its original beauty it still retains, but the delights of its form and colour had to be sacrificed for the exigencies of the City Railway, and to-day great unsightly mounds right down the centre of the park constitute the track of the underground railway. Now, to crown this disfigurement, there is the suggestion of 'the Labour caucus in the City Council, that Hyde Park would be an admirable site for the proposed new Municipal Library. The proposal has evoked the adverse criticism of those who see the open spaces gradually being filched from the public, but tlie Labour Party in the City Council to-day is omnipotent, and nobody knows what it will do next. It is at the expense of the city ratepayers that the free Municipal Library, one of the finest libraries of its kind in the world, is being maintained, but there are not a few who already think it is ail unfair burden, without putting up a new costly pile in Hyde Park, seeing that it is patronised almost wholly by people living outside the city proper, and is, properly speaking, a State Library, i n which one can borrow all the latest fiction and other works for nothing. The Public Library and the Mitchell Library are distinct institutions.