Blots On The Broad Highway

NZ Truth, Issue 1141, 13 October 1927, Page 4

Blots On The Broad Highway

-♦ JHE plea m Parliament for some restrictions being applied to the number of advertising hoardings on our main highways has this paper's heartiest support. The scenery of New Zealand is a most splendid heritage and its unspoiled grandeur represents far greater value to the rank and file of the public than could be hoped for m commercialized highways disfigured by eruptions of blatant advertising signs and "stunts" to popularize somebody or other's shoes, socks or sticking-plaster. New Zealand's mountains and native bush, preserved and revered as Nature made them, represent a great asset. The aesthetic and sentimental value of such outstanding natural features are being impaired through subject^ ing them to this type of development. So much of our scenic beauty is at the mercy of commercial interests and they have disfigured it with such pitiless bad taste, that the Government must now act and preserve unspoiled the wild areas that are under its jurisdiction. Thousands of Dominion people have a sincere fondness for native bush and mountain beauty, but they have not yet learned how to treat it or enjoy it to the full. It may take them a generation to learn that patent medicine signs, benzine advertisements, picnic litter and the wholesale destruction of shrubs and ferns add nothing to Nature's loveliness; but there are teaching agencies at work m our midst and soon the dumbest will be taught.