This process, coupled with the comparative excellence of our roads, has favoured the general adoption of motor haulage by traders of all classes throughout the country. The railways have in consequence felt the effects of the competition of the motor vehicle, and have retaliated by putting themselves into possession of considerable fleets, in order to secure the rapid distribution of the goods entrusted to them for delivery. In some instances, railway companies have established services in country districts to act as feeders to their branch or main lines. Simultaneously, the general development, initiated in the first case by private enterprise, has become so marked and has proved so conclusively the reliability of the heavy motor, that Government Departments--notably the General Post Office--have been impressed with the great possibilities of the new transport, and have adopted motor vans for long distance services as well as for local distribution of mails in great cities, as being more direct as well as more economical than the old arrangements with the railways. This applies particularly to the carriage of parcels. Side by side with this development has come the astonishing progress of the passenger motor vehicle. Here again, London has been the big moving influence. The greatest city in the world has grown from small beginnings according to its own sweet will. It has not been laid out, as have younger towns, with any clear scheme in view for meeting the growth of traffic requirements. Here again, the nearest parallel is to be found in Paris. Portions of that city are still similar to, or even worse than, London in this respect, and are traversed only by narrow and winding roads laid out on no intelligible scheme. Paris, however, has the advantage that for the past one hundred years definite methods of improvement have been pushed. Control has remained vested in the same departments, and the policy has been continuous. Consequently, the network of small streets has gradually become subordinate to an admirable system of main thoroughfares of great width and beauty, at the intersections of which are wide open places generally utilised for the erection of some of those fine monuments so dear to the French nation. Other and newer towns, of which Berlin may be taken as a fine typical example, have been from the first almost wholly constructed in accordance with a definite town planning scheme, and in all their later developments the tramcar has been regarded as a necessity of passenger transport, and every provision has been made to ensure that a complete system of railed traffic should be in every way facilitated, and so far as possible prevented from injuring the natural and architectural beauties, which must at all cost be maintained in the interests of trade prosperity as well as from æsthetic reasons.