minutes; (4) waiting at Buffling Junction to catch express, thirty-five minutes; (5) going from Buffling Junction to Bathington in express, thirty-five minutes; (6) getting out luggage, &c., at Bathington, twenty minutes; (7) losing time owing to late trains—say, twenty minutes in all. That is two hours and forty-five minutes—and who can say that I have exaggerated the delays and friction incident to an ordinary sea-side journey?
IV
But if, as I firmly believe, the roads are going to come back to their old importance, certain facts will at once become apparent. Directly we use the roads for personal and rapid transport mankind in general will begin to find out what the bicyclists found out long ago—namely, that our roads are very ill-fitted for the purposes for which they are designed. To begin with, they are usually too narrow. Next, they are rough in surface, and on the hills very badly 'graded.' Lastly, in certain cases, although this would not often be necessary, a mile or two might be saved by a short cut. I do not propose, of course, that all these improvements should be made at once—and most assuredly all the improvements must be made with a due preservation of the beauty and charm of our country roads and the districts they traverse—but, no doubt, as soon as the importance of the roads, so long overshadowed by the railways, revives there will be a great and pressing cry for highway improvements. It must not be supposed that in urging the improvement of the roads I am thinking merely of the convenience of the drivers of motor-cars. I believe that the improvement of the roads and their restoration and revival would be of the greatest possible national benefit. We all deplore, and rightly deplore, the decay of the village, but nothing would so quickly and soundly help the village as the resurrection of the road. If the men of the villages within the ten-mile radius of London could jump into a motor omnibus or brake and be carried to London for a penny, as they could be, we
