Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not
talk so much, I'll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House.
First, there's the room you can see through the glass—that's just the
same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way.—Through the Looking-GlassLike Alice, U.S. motorists, whose lot it is to dodge potholes, fight
traffic jams and search for nonexistent parking spaces, last week.won a
privileged peek through their rearview mirrors into a magic world of
wheels where things obviously go the other way. Home again in Madras,
India after a 50-day tour of Washington. D.C., New
York City, Los Angeles and eleven other U.S. cities. Captain Dinakar
Gnanaolivu. chairman of the Madras City Improvement Trust, summed up
his impressions of U.S. traffic in Madras' daily Hindu.”Most road surfaces are of highest quality, and all are dustless,” said
the captain. “Thousands of cars in every American town keep rushing
past, one behind another, in two or three or four rows, all maintaining
good speed in rhythmic, graceful waves of disciplined traffic. Traffic
policemen are never seen on roads normally. They rush in from police
stations only if there is an accident or anything untoward happens. All
public buses invariably run on time, and are rarely overcrowded. The
minimum sounding of the horn, by all motor vehicles, is amazing.”No stray goats or cattle can be seen wandering on any of the roads to
slow up vehicles or to nibble at young seedlings. I did not set my eyes
on any horse-drawn or bullock-drawn vehicle.”Pondering the orderly flow of U.S. motor cars . Captain Gnanaolivu found that it was due partly to an
unusual practice; i.e., roads are used only by motorists and sidewalks
only by pedestrians. But above and beyond this mutually exclusive
assignment of territory, the captain in 50 days discovered an ethical
explanation that had a genuine looking-glass tinge: “All this is done
spontaneously, with an inner urge in every man and woman to obey
traffic regulations and not because a policeman is there to book them!”
