THE NORTH ORBITAL ROAD • [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] Sur,—It is no, doubt well that the supporters of the Roads Beautifying Association (of whcm I. cm one) should _bestir themselves in the state of emergency, created by the making of the new North Orbital Road, as they are so eloquently asked to do by Colonel Wilfrid Ashley, with " the full approval and sympathy" of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald.
I trust that the /25,000 required for the buying of roadside frontages and the planting of trees, with a view to prevention of ribbon-building and the screening of back-building on the Buckinghamshire section, may be duly subscribed, but may I suggest that the chief object of the Association should be to try and render its own continued existence unnecessary ?
Is there any good reason why the seemliness and amenity of our public highways should be any more a matter of private concern and private generosity than is their mechanical efficiency ? Are we really so defeatist as to assume that whenever roads are made or widened, either by the Ministry of Transport or a local authority, the usual emergency situa- tion will continue to arise, and that State and official failure to plan far-sightedly and generously must still be repaired, how- ever inadequately and patchily, by uncertain private piety ?
Many intelligent foreigners with whom I have discussed our procedure have been amused at the existence of our Roads Beautifying Association, as though it had been a Road Repair- ing Association, or a Street Lighting and Scavenging Society. An appeal to the people of England by the late Minister of Transport, backed by the British Prime Minister, to subscribe to a fund to be applied to the mitigation of the deplorable con- sequences of a niggardly. State road policy in one specific case (which is typical rather than exceptional) will certainly seem exquisitely droll to those same foreigners.—! am, Sir, &C.,
`LOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS.
Travellers'. Club.
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