6 A War Memorial J or Bel J (ist. 



is now trying hard to get rid of. If anyone wishes to see 

 some of the reasons why the "gridiron" plan is defective, he 

 need only examine these sections of our own city. It is true, 

 also, that costly improvements have been made in oui- streets : 

 Victoria Street is a new creation : Royal Avenue has taken the 

 place of the Hercules Street which I remember as a boy ; but 

 these have been, one and all of them, expensive proofs that a 

 good original plan is a great economy, for it was the lack of good 

 planning which made these costly schemes necessary. With a 

 good plan it should not l)e necessary ever again to commit van- 

 dalisms such as we committed when we built a hotel upon the 

 consecrated ground in which nearly all the old makers of Belfast 

 lie buried. 



This lack of plan has often cost us dear, and will long 

 continue to do so. For lack of it, the floods in the Bog Meadows 

 still give our gamins an occasional day's boating in our streets. 

 For lack of it, we are still without a central railway station. For 

 lack of it, we have no circular roads to ease the traffic through 

 the congested centre of the town. For lack of it, Belfast 

 Cathedral stands in a back street. For lack of it, our population 

 per inhabited acre is about three times denser than it should 

 be. 



(11.) — Future. 



But if it is both interesting and important to look backwards 

 into the past of our town, it is more exciting and of much more 

 importance to forecast the developments ahead of us, if only 

 because, to however small an extent, we ourselves can appreciably 

 influence it. Under God, a community can shape its own civic 

 destinies. The Tercentenary Map of 1913 has marked upon it, 

 roughly, the city limits one hundred years earlier, and two 

 hundred years earlier. (FiG. 5). Can anyone look at it and 

 doubt that furthei- changes are coming 1 We see what the city has 

 been : we see what it is : can we see what it will be 1 Assuming 

 a spirit of progress and civic pride, I think we can prophecy 



