1 JUNE 1929, Page 18

THE LITTER OF LONDON [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

SIR,--Passing your new offices in Gower Street, looking so fresh in their livery of spring, I noticed beside them a drab and dirty street-cleaning van. Right under my nose, and your windows, Sir, a, dustman (as he is aptly called) was playing about with some buckets on an open cart. He thought he was removing cinders from your cellar, bat in truth he was scattering a great part of their contents to the breeze.

Perhaps half each bucket went into the cart, to be trundled slowly through London and added to one of the refuse heaps where feral creatures .prowl amid odours of .corruption. The other half-bucket of dust and debris, caught by the vernal air of Gower Street, went swirling away on to doorsteps and down areas and into the lungs of passers-by.

Is the London .County Council so bereft of energy and so poor in imagination that_it cannot see this evil and remedy it ? Do our aldermen and councillors need a Dante to lead them through the seven hells of Hornehurch ? How long shall we tolerate the archaic idiocy of these open dust-carts VITA NUOVA. ?—