Loose Leaves.
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A RECENT visitor to this country was Mr. John 1-11N. Willys, who is seen in the accompanying illustration. He naturally took the opportunity for visiting the Stockport factory of Willys-OverlandCrossley, Ltd., of which company he is president. Two other well-known personalities in the company and in the trade are also included, these being Sir William Letts, K.B.E., the managing director, and the chairman, Sir Kenneth Crossley, Bt.
In an interview with the Press, both Mr. Willys and Sir William Letts stated that it was their avowed intention.to make the various products they market here more and more British. In connection with this statement it is of considerable interest to note that the company is a British one with over 4,000 British. shareholders. The 221-acre factory employs an average of 1,000 British workpeople, £1,500,000 has been paid out in wages and salaries and £2,500,000 worth of British goods has been purchased to go into the vehicles.
MR. BECKETT, M.P. (as recorded by Our Special Parliamentary Correspondent, called attention to the danger caused by "stationary vehicles drawn up after sunset with their lights facing oncoming traffic," and Col. Ashley in reply said that "the best means of removing such a difficulty was education in the courtesies of the road." So between the Ministry of Transport and the Board of Education we may come to the solid ground, as one might say. However, that word " courtesy " might be called 3318
"a true bill," and in the apparent hopelessness of the Road Traffic Bill being passed during the present generation, would it be too Gilbertian for the Privy Council to issue an interim order making road courtesy compulsory ! As Hamlet (might have) said, "There are more things ip this word courtesy, Horatio, than were ever dreamed of in all your traffic Having opened this Utopian by-pass, so to speak, it leads the imagination into a wide arterial of possibilities. Already that blessed phrase, "preserve the amenities" has found its way into a Bill' to prevent the disfigurement of the countryside. A few years ago Material-minded people would have jeered at the idea of making it a, legal offence to erect an ugly notice board in a field, yet county councils have now power to legislate against the uglification of scenery. So, though the Road Traffic Bill may not get through the jam in the Parliamentary gangway in our time, a Road Courtesy Rill may be in the St. Stephen's book-of-words about the year 1940. We may then hear a bus-driver warned by a policeman against retorting discourteously to a costermonger.
APROPOS of courtesy and consideration for other users of the road the " Loader " sends the following leaf from his "Log Book" :—I was in a motor-van one day with my friend J., when we had to stop on a wild and lonely road in moorlund country in order to do some tinkering with the engine. As we were on a steep uphill gradient we took the liberty of borrowing a couple of large stones from an obliging and adjacent wall to put behind the back wheels. Having done the needful amenities to the engine, we continued our journey, and had driven ten miles before one of us remembered that we had left those two large stones in the road instead of replacing them on the wall. We debated whether we should drive back ten miles to replace them or not. Clearly, we owed it to the owner of the wall and to other• users of the road to return and gather up the mural fragments. I am not saying whether we did so or not. What would you have done?
SO there are still some horse tramcars'+ in the country, or to be exact, along the Promenade at Douglas, Isle of Man! We thank our correspondents, who must have been over to the island much more recently than we have and who thus enable us to correct our impressions recorded here a fortnight ago. Well, well!. We are crossing to Ireland and then up to Scotland in a day or two and shall make a point of calling in at Douglas just to see one of these old relics. It will quite take us back to old times—to the days of the early Tourist Trophy races and to those three-o'clock-inthe-morning practice runs around the course with Tom Thornycroft, C. S. Rolls, J. S. Napier, Cyril Roberts, A. E. George and,.other .crack drivers of the period.