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turning observed. They were compelled thereto by the exigencies of ignorance. To secure a statistic of traffic intention without delay or inquisition is, I think, the way to relief, perhaps to complete relief. It is not quite impossible.

Establish a traffic office preferably near a telephone exchange and entrust the curves which I have called the 'speed characteristics' (corrected and up to date) of all congested streets, as well as some good maps, to the clerks therein. Broadcast the offer that any driver who applies, declaring his vehicle number, will be given without charge the route of shortest time (for the hour of the day) from any one place to another, by the diligent clerks of that office. Lastly, ensure by some inducement that the traffic office is popularly utilised. We have then at once a tolerable solution, because we have got, in advance, a clue to the direction factor' of the unit of traffic, and we can control it for its own and the common good.

The form taken by the inducements may be left to the Traffic Authority; but I can imagine a constable at the traffic blocks taking the number of a waiting car and asking the driver whether he had been duly advised to travel this way to his objective. The ready lie need not be seriously feared-most people dislike it, notably when it can be brought home by reference to the records of the traffic office. Taxi-drivers are easily persuadable. Their pay for waiting time should be a trifle less than for mileage, and they will avoid congestions like the plague. Once the system was launched the neglectful might be reminded that causing an obstruction is punishable when it is avoidable. The real inducement is public spirit, and the tangible reward, quicker progress. It would be important that all town telephone calls for 'traffic office' should be free of charge; and that the great roads, such as the North Road, the Bath Road, the Great West Road, be furnished with traffic call-boxes at their entry to the town. Above all, improve the nameplating of the streets.

Whatever view be taken of this brief outline, the fact remains that London streets are gravely neglected in the matter of their name-plates-the selection of their names and the numbering of houses. Put a good driver

in a covered car, for all cars are covered in our climate during the bulk of the year, forbid him to ask the way since that retards the traffic, and tell him to drive by map from East Ham to Brixton, or the like, without using the main thoroughfares save near the bridge; and it will take him several hours for the few miles, chiefly because when he is in a street he cannot discover its name, and when he is entering it he cannot see the name, which is too high, too much round the corner, not discoverable, and not illuminated. Lastly, when he has found it, it is King Street, or High Street, or George Street, just as if there were not 65,000 other possible names in the English language.

A great many years ago, as motoring history goes, the Royal Automobile Club marked out on the map of London a peripheral route, to be called, I think, the 'Circle,' though 'Kuklos' would better distinguish it from the Underground railway. This 'Kuklos' was primarily to enable country motorists to avoid the maze of London on their progress-say from Kent to Hertford, and, secondarily, to help Londoners to reach any end of their town without crossing the central congestions. It was a large irregular circle to be reached by any one within it, or outside, by travelling down a radian until entered. He should then go along it to the nearest point to the objective, and thence once more down a radian till the end was attained. Probably the chief gain from this suggestion, unless there were great expenditure, would be the ease of finding one's waya facility chiefly due to the continuity of the name 'Kuklos,' which would be added to the existing name.

One would have supposed that the convenience and the wealth such traffic would inevitably bring to the Boroughs traversed would have been inducement enough. I am told that some local authorities cleared, repaired, and even widened, their little bit; but others were incredulous, and so 'Kuklos' remains a dream. It is, however, a prophetic dream. Perhaps a circular thoroughfare raised to clear existing roads with tangential exits and entrances sloping down to the streets and reserved for one-way circulation may hereafter come to round off some such scheme as the 'traffic office' herein outlined, and to simplify the work of the clerks therein, as well as

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that of the drivers, while affording under the road a line of rent-paying shops and factories to contribute to the capital charges of such a construction.

In touching upon some of the aspects of modern traffic in this article, no particular mention has been made of the far-reaching-almost revolutionary-effects of its development. Roads which in past times were little more than pointers indicating distant places to an unheeding population have become an integral part of a remunerative industry-and as such have become valuable investments. Profound modifications have been brought to the manner of life of a people, the range of personal and social contact has been so extended that each individual has an increased power of selecting his affinities. The clash of diverse views in diverse places tends to banish parochialism. Access to other persons, things, and places, other beauties, and other instruction, will increase foresight, tolerance, and happiness. The marked freedom which has been given to youths by motoring has earlier given them responsibility, which is itself a training. There will, of course, be rueful grumbling when motoring (and cycling) doubles and yet redoubles, as it will; but such grumbling is not without its merit. England is very sane. When well-directed, grumbling checks an evil and leaves the good, when ill-considered it harmlessly amuses by its betrayal of a lack of vision.

MERVYN O'GORMAN.

Art. 4.-HOMER AND THE TROAD.

1. Troy, A Study in Homeric Geography.

Leaf. Macmillan, 1912.

By Walter

2. Homer and History. By Walter Leaf. Macmillan, 1915.

3. Strabo on the Troad. By Walter Leaf. Macmillan, 1923.

4. Diary in the Dardanelles. By William Knight. Hurst, 1849.

DR WALTER LEAF is perhaps the foremost Homeric scholar in Great Britain, and, like the historian Grote, he unites the practical insight and knowledge of affairs of a great banker with the enthusiasm of a great scholar. He has written many books about Homer and Troy and the Trojan War; and has the distinction of having changed his mind and, if we may say so, improved on his earlier judgment. 'He grows old,' like Solon, 'learning many things.' Beginning as an adherent of the lay theory, inclined to divide the 'Iliad into separate poems written by different bards, he ends (as Andrew Lang wrote a very short time before his death) by becoming 'plus loyaliste que le roi,' and accepting a single poet, Homer. His work, which began by his co-operation in the excellent prose translation of Homer, and continued through a series of special studies on Homer, finds its real basis in the minute knowledge of the land and its character, which he acquired in an exploration of six weeks in the Troad, and which is set forth in his careful study of Strabo's account of the country and of Strabo's opinions about Homer. Dr Leaf, chronologically speaking, has builded first, and established the foundations later. But the foundations of his maturer theorising were really laid in his own mind by travel and observation, following on the minute weighing of the text needed in translating into English, and cemented by subsequent study at home. He has now completed his work, though it is to be hoped that he has not ended it, by publishing the geographical and topographical study on which it all rests; and it is to this latest book that our attention is chiefly directed. It is an interesting fact that the more familiar he has

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made himself with the geographical and topographical features of the Trojan land, the more convinced he has become of the essential truth of the 'Iliad.' The Troes had disappeared long before the time of Herodotus, and the tale of Troy belonged to a remote past, preserved to the Hellenes only by the poems of Homer, a real single maker of a great epic.

The Troad is formed by the range of Mount Ida, the northernmost of the five fingers' protruded from the main elevated plateau of Anatolia towards the west and the Ægean coast; and accordingly the Troad falls naturally into two main divisions, the land south of Ida and the land on the north side adjoining the Hellespont. To these two divisions must be added the narrow westcoastland and the glen where the Scamander flows through breaks in the skirts of Ida, and emerges on the little coast-plain of Troy proper. There is no natural harbour in the Troad, which has gravely impeded its economic value.' Troy was not naturally a commercial centre its history shows it as a robber-city preying upon others. The city is not a place where lines of road and of commerce could converge; and the same is true of the Troad as a whole, which geographically is 'the country watered from Ida,' and commercially has no important connexion with the rest of Asia Minor.

Dr Leaf has chosen to describe the geography of the Troad, not as a record of his own travel, but as a commentary on Strabo. Strabo was not a traveller in the Troad. He had not seen what he reasons about. He was little, if anything, more than a commentator on, and critic of, Demetrius of Skepsis, a town in the middle Scamander vale. Demetrius knew the country well; and, where he errs, his mistake lies in theorising, not in description of the country. The plan of Dr Leaf's book is more valuable and instructive than a mere picturesque record of his travels in the Troad. He had a good ancient guide, and his book is a geographical commentary on the 'Iliad.' It is not easy to read, for it needs much preliminary knowledge; and the reader has to exercise the same self-denial that Dr. Leaf imposed on himself.

Few will agree with Strabo and Demetrius that there was a 'Troy-land' ruled by nine governing families, all