LEAVES FROM THE INSPECTOR'S NOTEBOOK
Page 8
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Yellow English. Safety First for Wounded Heroes. Useful. New Maps.
JUST AT THE TIME when considerable discussion is taking place as to the desirability of perpetuating the custom of advertising proprietary articles by roadside signs, it does not seem inappropriate to inquire how it is, at this late stage of affairs, that there are still displayed, in 'not inconsiderable numbers in various parts of the country, the at one time familiar signboards of the Continental Tyre Co. It is a fact that there are more of these boards still in existence and well displayed by the roadside than appears to be the case from casual observation. How it is that they still remain where they are, and have not long since been removed, is indeed a puzzle. Boards of this sort are not, as a general rule, displayed for nothing, nor is the continuance of tenancy of the space they occupy procurable without consideration in some form or another. Is rent still being paid for the privilege of maintaining this very questionable form of publicity? If not, why is it that such boards have not disappeared several years ago?
In certain cases these "yellow English" signs— propaganda of a most astute German trading concern —bear the imprint of a local motor agent or trader. If the boards are still being kept in position for the sake of such deflected publicity, the traders in question should know better. If the answer is that the traders have long since disappeared from one war cause or another, and that it is, therefore, nobody's particular business to remove the offending signs, it is obviously the duty of the local authorities, under some of their many powers, to remove these commer
cial eyesores.
It is indeed time, after four years of war, that no Continental Tyre advertisement should still remain publicly displayed. May we hope that a sense of shame will spur any agent who may be directly concerned to take at least belated action. If rent is still being paid for the sites they occupy, it is certainly not inconceivable that the remedy should lie in action to be taken under the Trading with the Enemy Regulations. Surely this is a matter which might not improperly engage the attention of the British Motor Tyre Manufacturers' Association. It is not to be imagined that it is the desire of any user of tyres that there should still be a means of preserving, to however small an extent, Hun tyre goodwill in this country, even if it only be goodwill of title.
Safety First for Wounded Heroes.
Apropos of my recent plea that special and novel facilities should be afforded by traffic authorities to facilitate the passage of wounded soldiers in and about the streets and other public thoroughfares, I am interested to note that some at lead of us are evidently already thinking practically on these lines. A short public notice appeared in the Press one day last week stating that the management of the Shaftesbury Theatre had, with a view to making things easy for those of their visitors who were disabled or incapacitated, constructed a special passage between the street to the floor of the theatre, for the use solely of wounded soldiers. This, compared with the task ahead, is, of course, but a trivial palliative, but we may surely herald it as tangible evidence that the need itself is a very actual one. Sooner or later we shall have to take this problem into consideration, not only -from the point of view of the comfort of the poor fellows whose burdens we ,cannot do too much to lighten, but also from that of the maintenance of public convenience and of the avoidance, if possible (and without slight in any form to the disabled men themselves), of restriction of the free circulation for
B28" the enormous passenger traffic of the Metropolis and all other big centres. All big movements start in a small way, and I therefore particularly welcome this record of practical effort on the part of the management of the Shaftesbury Theatre. It is the first that has been brought to my notice, at any rate. I hope soon to hear that that enterprising collection of traffic experts, the Metropolitan Safety First Committee, is taking the matter into its brainy and helpful consideration.
Useful New Maps.
After many months of comparative stagnation on the battle fronts, a state of affairs that has done nothing to sustain interest in the topographical situations of the opposing armies on the Western and all the other Fronts, we have happily and suddenly arrived at a phase of the operations when maps of various parts of the world suddenly become of intense interest again to most of us. A great many men are very fond of maps for their own sake ; they can satisfactorily spend hours studying them. It is certain that hundreds of thousands of men—aye, and women too—forced into a military career now necessarily, entertain and will continue to retain a much keener and more personal interest in maps and their significance than ever they anticipated before the war broke out. This .cannotp but have the effect, when peace conditions againsarrive, that maps will mean a good deal more to the average man and woman than they did previously.
I went into a bookseller's in a dusty back street in Soho one day last week, attracted by one of those very excellent "Daily Telegraph" maps of -the tortured and twisted country between the North Sea and the Vosges. I had long wanted one of these, but had time and time again been met with the reply that they were out of print. Hoping that at least I should obtain the solitary example displayed in the window of the dusty bookshop, I challenged the equally dusty proprietor, who surprised me by promptly bringing forward a pile of new " D.T." maps, and, at the same time, by volunteering the statement that, whereas he had not sold a single copy for the past month, I was the fifteenth inquirer he had had that morning. If for no other reason, he hoped that the. present pushful tactics in military circles would endure just at a time when we are all again becoming map interested.
I have had sent to me a set of four excellent new maps, produced by the pushful contemporary of this journal, "The Motor," dealing with the country 100 miles round London. Quite a piece of that country _ is, of course, the sea, but that does not militate against the exceptional utility of these maps to all those who use the roads—they, at any rate, can find out very readily where the roads end. It was at the time of one of the great Continental motor racing periods, some years ago, that one of the German humorous papers for once in a way produced an amusing cartoon which showed a typical racing Hun on a high-powered racing car on the beach somewhere round England, screeching his brakes and bursting his tyres in the endeavour to stop. He was presumed to be yelling, " Gott in Himmel I Confound this island, I are always running into the sea."
"The Motoi'a " maps have always been excellent in their way and have a wide-flung reputation. These four new ones are particularly handy in size arid exceptionally easy to read. I can imagine no more useful series for those whose commercial motoring takes them over roads up to 100 miles from the heart of the Metropolis.