COMMERCIAL MOTOR
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The present is a. time of making do. Everybody prefers to make do rather than to grumble, no matter how great the temptation to lapse. There is a feeling, no doubt, with thousands of our countrymen enduring unspeakable hardships in the trenches, that we should all endeavour to continue to make do with such opportunities and means as come our way.
We might recount, were this the place to do it, many incidents whieth go far to show that our soldiers have had to make do with the wrong thing—with, for example, puttees which shrunk under water to the point of stopping the circulation in the men's lower limbs, thus intensifying the agonicm of frost-bite and gangrene. But this is not the place, and we must be content to leave that aspect of recent--we hope not current—occurrences to colleagues of the daily Press. It is easy to be wise after the event, but one may be excused for thinking that somebody should have foreseen the natural effects of the wearing of the regulation leg-covering in flooded trenches. We, at home, are making do with a modified yet remarkably efficient degree of maintenance of public and other services. Trains are late, and sometimes do not run, with or without notice, particularly on the southern lines ; sailing dates for steamers are postponed in any fashion, or no fashion ; the independent messenger-boy, thoughtlessly taking advantage of the nation's predicament, stays in bed of a morning when he likes, and does not deliver our morning papers ; the English waiter, coming into his own, to quote a common phrase, does so awkwardly and slowly. Yet we have no redress, and probably do not want any. We are making do in all these directions. They may appear, in some cases, to be of minor importance, but they are typical. One has again, but to glance at the condition of the animals between any successive dozen pairs of shafts, to realize the extent of making do with horse-stack.
There is, we are most concerned to know, much making do, and some making ado, in commercial-motor circlesOur carriers and big stores have perforce reduced their delivery services ; our haulage contractors have put up their rates, and exhibit contumely in respect of returned empties ; our motorbus proprietors, certainly not by their own desire, have been obliged to defer the day of dealing with the peak load, are daily, with the consent of the authorities, contravening the loading regulations, and have had to abandon, without much notice, not a few of their old routes ; the depression amongst char-k-bancs owners was our theme of last week. All these owner interests are making do themselves, as much as their patrons. They have—all but the char-k-bancs owners who cannot get away from their derelict bodies—sought to combat the difficulties by which they were overtaken as the result of Government impressments by adopting their own methods of impressment. They have—with the exception named—endeavoured to draw into their service vehicles of types, sizes and strengths which are not appropriate to the work in hand, but with which there is a reasonable likelihood of making do.
The spirit of making do is. the spirit of the day, and we feel confident that it will so continue as long as the war does. We have become accustomed, in London at any rate, to making do with light enough only to make the streets veritable death traps, and the same vein of accommodation runs through everything. The educational influence of the necessitous state to which all transport has been reduced will be of marked effect. The driver of a motor vehicle who has to effect a temporary repair with the aid of a bootlace, a piece of wire or a match is thereby taught to appreciate more thoroughly a proper repair when it can be effected under normal conditions at his employer's depot or an engineer's shop. He none the less makes do with a makeshift for so long as may be necessary. He does not lose heart, nor give up his job. it is his ambition and pride to get to his destination. We perceive parallels in the hand-to-mon,th existence which many would-be owners and users of commercial motors are now leading. They are
-flaking do, but the lesson is being enforced upon them that they literally cannot in the future do without the facilities of which they are temporarily deprived.
The base-line of commercial motoring has been driven very low, and increasingly into the region of
unsuitable models of pleasure-car extraction or second-hand disrepute. We do not infer that every second-hand vehicle requires to be looked upon as an instrument to be rejected, because many commercial vehicles of approved make change hands, with advantage to all parties, in the second-hand market. We do intend, however, to emphasize the outstanding fact that the extraordinary combination of circumstances which has been forced upon the country, and from the effects of which we see no prospect of immediate release, has nokns volens brought into the category of commercial user frames and parts upon four wheels which had otherwise never been so classed by critics of the most charitable disposition. The searching out of reserves in the country soon brought those reserves to an end, and the trenching upon non-commercial resources followed. We believe that nothing but goad will come of these experiences Many new converts will be made to the cause which we have at heart, whilst those of recent or old standing have been so nearly paralysed in their business by the losses in which their state of deprivation has involved them, that they 'have merely been made more than ever keen to get back to the days of unhampered supply of vehicles which obtained until August last. For the present, everybody is making do, and waiting. Those good days will come. Echo, we agree, answers "When?"