. * * * * There is, I suppose, no
petrol shortage. Certainly there can be none if petrol consumption by the army is any indication. Of the ceaseless streams of lorries charging up and down our main roads in both directions, some full, some empty, I say nothing. It must be assumed they are on their lawful and necessary occasions; but if economy in petrol were ever called for there would seem to be considerable scope for it here. And there is a good deal more than that—stories, for example, of a man being sent in a lorry four or five miles to the nearest town to fetch an evening paper (one such volunteered the information that if he brought the wrong one he was sometimes sent back to get the other), and of privates offering petrol for sale at is. a gallon or so to passing motorists. Conditions, of course, vary, In some units the check on petrol is very strict; in others it is obviously very lax. So sometimes is the check on driving. I noticed the other day the report of a fatal accident caused by a novice driving an army lorry. Exactly the same thing hap- pened in a case within my own knowledge. A learner took the wheel on a country road, safe enough except for a slight curve. In fifty seconds he had run the lorry up a bank and killed himself. In less than a week, less than a mile away on the same road, I passed another lorry on its side. At the same time it is fair to point out that conspicuous as such accidents become, they must be considered in their numerical relation to the vast amount of army traffic on the roads.
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