NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22512, 1 September 1936, Page 10

NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

Uniform surfacing of the main roads of Britain will bo one of the principal features of the great scheme of national control announced by Mr. HoreBelisha, Minister of Transport, in the House of Commons. The Great North Road has been cited as an example of what changes the new scheme will produce. This road, between London and Edinburgh, is controlled by 31 different local authorities, an average of 12J miles of road to each, while on the 110 miles between London and Birmingham there are 23 different types of surface. Under the now scheme the Great North Road, after being transferred to the Ministry, would be widened, furnished with cycle tracks and separate carriageways, and given a uniform surface. Similar alterations will be made to all trunk roads wherever possible. All trunk roads will not be made of uniform width. The width will vary with the volume of traffic at various points. The aim will be to secure a gradual "tapering" of the widths of a trunk road according to traffic requirements. The minimum standard of lighting recommended by the Departmental Committee on Street Lighting—to enable drivers to proceed with safety at 30 miles an hour without the use of head-lights—would also be an ideal to aim at, according to an offidial of the Ministry of Transport.

A MOLLYCODDLED PEOPLE Tlio Pacifism and "Peace-at-any-prico" proposals, so rampant at this time, are duo partly to a certain dense materialism and partly to the softening of the national fibre and to the mollycoddling influences which have been steadily developing of late years in all departments of the national life, writes the Rev. Walter Seeker in a letter to the Morning Post. To speak as if Christianity should aim, above all things, at evading tlio imposition of physical suffering and death is a preposterous and densely materialistic perversion of the teaching of the Founder. Every day we are becoming (labbier and flabbier, and'more and moro hostile to material discomfort of any kind. All our social and educational legislation aims at making things easier and softer—less effort, less work required; more holidays and moro games—interminable games! Wo are progressively becoming a nation of mollycoddles and babies who run away from horrid, rough men when they threaten to fight. If we are ever to count in the world again, and play the tremendous part which seems to bo awaiting us, there will have to be a bracing national revival. Soft and sloppy, we shall have to straighten our spines, brace our muscles, and place our necks willingly beneath the yoke of discipline. Otherwise the hordes of Attila, rough, fierce, and disciplined, will go through us as a knife through butter.