[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—Railways are the arteries
which carry the life blood of our commerce. Our shipping and exporting industries depend' on them : roads, by comparison, are the veins through which the distributing trades send a return flow of imported goods.
We have provided many times more miles of motor track than there are miles of railway track in Britain,: the former is free of cost to the users in respect of land purchase and con- struction, services of safety and traffic management, and free of a large part of the cost of maintenance. We spend sixty millions a year on helping people and goods (the goods are mostly imports) to move along the highways of Britain ; but we have never yet spent so much as three millions in a year to help people and goods to move between the coasts of . Britain and those oversea coasts which are under the British flag.
The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of sub- sidizing foreign imports. The present Government in their Budget this year have 'recognized the proper claims of agri- culture and exporting industries. This is a movement in the right direction, and I hope it will go a great deal farther.
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