MOTORING AND SPYING
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The indignation which you express about the new regulations as to the enforcement of the speed limit, which provoke you to denounce them as a " New, Spy system " would seem to be very much discounted by the admissions of Janus in your issue of March 15th. In your issue of March 22nd you say :
' " The thirty-mile limit was first announced months ago. There was no outcry or protest against it.- Motorists as a whole, while some .of them might be sceptical as .to its necessity and wisdom, showed themselves perfectly ready to give it a fair trial."
But Janus had written in your previous issue ; " Pill Mall and on Constitution Hill there is a 20-mile lirnit, univeraally observed [italics mine] without any .special police cars, fasted speedometers, gongs, or any of the rest of the paraphernalia. A good many cars no doubt' do 22 or even 25 miles on occasion, but a few prosecutions of drivers -defying the limit much 'more flagrantly than that are quite enough to keep general speed down."
Janus,has destroyed the affirmation of his first paragraph by the admissions of his second paragraph—and had also agreed in a preceding paragraph that,"• When, there is .a law it ought, no doubt, to be enforced.'.'-_ _ _
What is the use of establishing a " limit " if " a good many cars" are to exceed it with impunity ? Can the motoring objectors be said to be " perfectly ready to give the 30-mile limit a fair trial '7 if they intend to go, in a " good, many_,7 cases, 33 to 37 miles an hour,.with prosecutions reserved only. for those who " defy the limit much more flagrantly " ?
Of what use is this speed ? What does the whole nation gain by it ? We know what it loses-7,000 lives every year, and a quarter of a million injured. The continuous slaughter must be stopped, and Mr. Hore-Belisha and Lord 'I'renchard seem to be the men to stop it. It surely behoves all men of gOOd will to support them.—Ymirs faithfully,
FRANK STONE, -
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