Essays in Idleness

Not so much roads, per se, but paved roads, and especially, paved roads with passing lanes: this is what I’m against. For since, in childhood, I developed a fascination for Roman roads, and extended this to Persian and Greek and Egyptian, and even Mongolian “throughways,” and Chinese boulevards and canals, I have had, or used to have, almost a soft spot for the strata, in the broadest sense, or passages for innocent travel.

“Road by which all might come and go that would, / And bear our freights of worth to foreign lands,”  was how Wordsworth defined them, in one of his noble celebrations of the British Empire. It was the creation of roads, and the eclipse of piracy under force of arms, and the first bold attempt to eliminate slavery from the world — which was, even before the Pax Americana, the amazing British gift, and made them so obviously superior to all the lesser races. But time goes on, and now Britain comes to be occupied by desert savages again. Yet all civilized empires have contributed, in their time, to making the world more suitable for human habitation. This is why I am an enthusiastic imperialist.

Too, by disposition, a convinced “humanist.” I favour the human, over the machine; and when we make roads I want to walk on them, and not have to dive out of the way whenever a car comes by.