MADAME GALLI-CURCI’S OPINION

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12181, 4 July 1925, Page 14

MADAME GALLI-CURCI’S OPINION

“THANK GOD FOR HENRY FORD” Madame Amelita Galli-Curei is every bit as observant as she is talented musically. In her peregrinations round the world Madame has taken more than a passing interest in the ways of communities, and how they build up their cities. For example, Madame, in the course of an interview yesterday, said, in discussing Australian matters, what an enormous pity it was that Sydney, with its splendid natural site, should _have submitted to the house crowding and congestion that make So many of its districts positively ug ‘W do they not build good roads firsfPV asked Madame, "and get the people out into the suburbs and the country as they do in the case of many of the k modern cities of America. In Los Angeles, for instance, they cut up the land in the suburbs into lots of a certain size, always enough to build a nice home and have a garden, and afterwards they peimit no subdivision; but first of all they make a good surface road to the place, and that gives the people all they want. What I say is "Thank God for Henry Ford/ for good roads and Henry I Ford have made it possible for many hundreds of thousands of people in America to live out in the beautiful suburbs and the country, away from the grime and the clamour of the city. What they do in America is not to wait for the population to be cettled in a place before they run a go-od surfaced road out to it, but they iun a good road out to a plaqe perhaps where they are no people i ;

living at all, but one© that road is down th© lots begin to sell, and the homes begin to go up. Most people in the States can afford to run a Ford —even the work, people—and this provides them with th© means of getting to t'heir homes quicker and more comfortably than by any of the ordinary services. It takes them cut among th© fields and flowers, and helps to make a finer healthier people. "Where Sydney has made the mistake is in crowding the houses close together, street after street, until there is no land, no beauty left, whereas by spreading out a little and making the lots bigger they could have had one of the most beautiful and picturesque cities in the world." Mr Homer Samuels, husband of the famous singer, intervened to say that the situation was altogether different in a place like Wellington, because it was confined by th© encircling mountains, but in other places where these topographical obstructions did not exist, there was now no excuse for extensions of a city to go on in the same bad old way, when a policy of good roads would pave the way to cheaper and larger sections, and, ergo, better homes.