he case; the railway has very nearly reached the limit of its
efficiency (at any rate in thickly settled parts), and the electric
roads have merely stepped in and completed its functions.

It is certain that an improved system of road administration or
control is needed. The turnpike or the highroad served its purpose
well enough in coaching days as the most direct and quickest way
between important towns. To-day, in many respects, conditions are
changed. Certain centres of population and commercial activity have
progressed at the expense of less fortunate communities, and the
one-time direct highroads now deviate considerably, with the result
that there is often an unnecessary prolongation of distance and
expenditure of time.

Examples of this sort are to be found all over Britain, but a great
deal less frequently in France, where the communication is by a more
direct line between important centres, often leaving the small and
unimportant towns out of the itinerary altogether.

In England, centralization or nationalization of the road-building
authority should remedy all this. Cuts and deviations from existing
lines, for the general good, would then be made without local
jealousy or misapplied influence being brought to bear, and the
general details of width and surface be carried on throughout the
land, under one supreme power, and not, as often now is the case, by
various local district and urban councils and county surveyors.

"The Great North Road" and "The Famous Bath Road" vary greatly
throughout their length as to width and excellence; and yet popular
opinion in the south of England would seem to indicate that these
roads, to single them out from among others, are idyllic, both in
character of surface and skill of engineering, throughout their
length. This is manifestly not so. The "Bath Road," for example, in
parts, is as flat and well-formed a surface as one could hope to
find, even in France itself, but at times it degenerates into a mere
narrow, guttery alley, especially in its passage through some of the
Thames-side towns, where the surface is never of that excellence that
it should be; throughout its entire length of some hundred odd miles
to Bath there are ever-recurring evidence of bad road-making and
worse engineering.

One is bound to take into consideration that it is the automobile,
and the general increase in automobile traffic, that, in all
countries, is causing the wide-spread demand for imp