During the past five years the world has been brought face to face with the fact that carriages can be built which will travel along the roads with safety and comfort, carrying comparatively heavy loads, at a rate of speed which, if it does not rival that of an express train, is sufficient to make the way without rails quite capable of giving us all we want in the matter of fast short-distance transport. This fact makes it certain that the road is once more destined to play a great part in our national life. Already men of all kinds are beginning to talk about the roads, to ask as to the state of the roads, and to inquire into such questions as gradients, surface, width, straightness. When ordinary men travelled by the railway only and merely used a little section of road, hardly more than five or six miles long, to get to the nearest station, the road played a very small part in their lives. Now that travelling along fifty, or even a hundred miles of road is becoming common, and that the return to the road is almost accomplished, the old interest in the highway is, as I have said, reviving, and men are once again beginning to see the importance of the road.
- ↑ In this chapter I have resumed portions of articles dealing with our roads written by me in The Spectator.
