NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18324, 14 February 1923, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

ROADS AND EMPLOYMENT. The need to find work for the unemployed in the United Kingdom has led to advocacy of road improvement. In the course of two highly valuable articles in the Times, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu proposes to use the unemployed and dolereceiving workers to make and remake the roads. He calculates the cost of new and' improved roads at fifty millions, and suggests the paying off of that sum in twenty years by an extra tax on motor spirit. Tho proposal has met with warm approval. Commenting on it the Spectator emphasises the necessity for good roads. Anyone who lives in the country can think of a dozen sharp corners within four mlies of his house which are crying out to be made safe to carry the quadrupled motor traffic which is actually in sight. There are narrow and tortuous necks which connect and so spoil the utility of a great many otherwise reasonably good roads, and, finally, there are dozens of stretches of otherwise good road the utility of which, is destroyed by excessively high gradients. Gradients, remember, are one of the things which still make motoring difficult for the poor man. They require highSowered cars to negotiate them. Road evelopment is not only a crying necessity, but is precisely the form of public work which is best able to absorb the unemployed. We must attend to our roads quickly if we are not going to see them dangerously congested , and the nation deprived of the full benefits of door-to-door transport—the boon which only adequate roads can give. Door-to-door transport means transport at a man's own time and convenience, and also cheap transport. Remember, also, that door-to-door transport means no breaking of bulk and often no expensive packing and packing-cases. Further, such motor transport is very often a thing which a man can manage in his leisure hours and need not hire people to do for him."

dominion Navies. The participation of the New Zealand cruiser Chatham in joint manoeuvres with the Australian fleet at Jervis Bay in March will be an event of historic importance, says the Sydney Morning Herald. It will be the first occasion during peace in which fighting ships from two countries of the British Empire have combined for manoeuvres. The announcement carries us back fourteen years to the Imperial naval conference which planned a scheme for a joint Empire fleet in the Pacific which was never completed. It carries us back to the original policy upon which the "first Australian ships were launched and commissioned. It will revive as a matter for debate between the British Govern-, ment and the Dominions"the problem iof an Empire naval policy which must be settled. . . . The Australian Navy was conceived at the Imperial Conference of 1909, not as a separate - fleet, but as a fleet unit, one unit of a com-' posite fleet, a unit which, when combined with two Royal Navy units of standard design, would form one combined squadron of battle-cruisers, two combined squadrons of light cruisers, and two or more combined squadrons of destroyers. That scheme was never fully carried out for reasons which are now ancient history, and then; has been no common Imperial naval policy arranged to take the place of the scheme discarded. Both the Henderson and the Jellicoe schemes, admirable if we had the population strength and the money, leave the real problem unaltered. Australia cannot provide her own naval defence unaided. Yet it is the immutable law which governs every robust island people that, because of their geographical position, and because they live upon an essentially maritime trade, they must make some provision for maritime defence. The line of policy is clear. The naval security of British people and trade in the Pacific must be a duty of the Mother Country and the Dominions jointly. And the reason why the Australian fleet is in a state of stagnation to-dayas regards recruiting at any rate —is that seamen here, or anywhere else, will * not sign on for long-term enlistment (the only efficient system) if no inducement is offered of foreign service. Foreign service,' interchange of our" ships with ships of British squadrons, -is the solution of our radical difficulty. Thus we shall create both a real Empire fleet and a sturdy local naval sentiment. The policy of both the late Admiral Dumaresq and of Commodore Addison has been to train our ships for such development. We are unfeignedly glad of the step forward : taken in the arrangement for joint manoeuvres of the Australian and New Zealand ships, and that it has been taken on the initiative of the Royal Australian Navy, '.