Great Waste in our Social Life

in many directions. We will have to have greater co-operation in domestic life and in our social life generally. I was much struck at the improvements that have been made in many ways in America. Let us page 18 take a very simple thing—roadmaking. In America they are making hard concrete roads far quicker than we make them, far more lasting, more efficient, and at a great saving in expense. Let me illustrate what can be done in America. When America went into the war she had to create camps—or, as they call them cities—for her soldiers, and Lord North-cliffe, in one of his papers on what America had done during the war, said: "Early in July there lay, 300 miles outside San Antonio. Texas, a stretch of ground round with a difficult kind of scrub or bush. By July 6 there appeared an army of between 9,000 and 10,000 workmen, of every known Nationality, directed by voting Americans of the Harvard and Yale type. The 10,000 arrived in every kind of conveyance—in mule carts, farm waggons, house cabs, motors, and huge motor vans. At the end of tile day's work, when the whistle had blown, the scene resembled that of some eccentric, elabmately-staged cinematograph film. Together with the army of 10,000 men came many kinds of sets of automatic machinery and hard concrete roads were made with a thorough nessand permanence which should attract attention in Europe. In this new town outside San Antonio 12 miles of rails, 25 miles of road, 31 miles of water pipe, 30 miles of sewers were accomplished in 45 days. . . . On August 25 a considerable part of the city was ready for occupation. The strongly and comfortably built huts wove provided with heating arrangements for the winter, and baths (hot and cold) are attached ton each building. There are vast stores and vast blocks, several post offices, a huge bakery, laundry, stables for 1,300 hurten and nudes, hospital, schools—in all between 1,200 and 1,300 buildings, And what has been done in Texas was being simultaneously done in 15 other parts of page 19 the country." Contrast that with what we did at. Trentham with what we did in making the road between Wellington and Petone.