40 
markets, and other public places. It shall be adopted by the Town 
Council, and finally submitted to the King for his approval or re- 
jection. 
In Italy it. is compulsory that every town of 10,000 inhabitants 
must have its town-planning scheme. 
In England, Franc, e, Italy, United States, Sweden, Canada, 
Nova Scotia, and Germany, town-planning has been in force for 
years. Even during the war England has spent many millions and 
has other large schemes in hand. In London the .architects, engin- 
eers, surveyors, and city officials are working on a comprehensive 
plan covering housing and traffic routes over an area of 2,000 square 
miles round London. In France, the Senate have passed a law 
which provides that every city, town, or village in France, regardless 
of whether it is in the destroyed area or not, will be forced to lay its 
future developments according to modern city planning principles. 
Belgium has appointed a board of town-planners to deal with 
the existing, as well as the ruined, towns. 
Australia must awake and keep up to the other nations of the 
world in the march of progress. We cannot afford to lag behind 
them. 
It must not be forgotten also that, now the war is over, 
some 30,000 soldiers, strong, able-bodied, virile, vigorous men, the 
best of our race, will return to Western Australia, and while we 
hope that many will take up rural occupations, yet it is almost cer- 
tain that the majority of them will settle in towns and suburbs. 
This means more rapid development than heretofore. Are we there- 
fore to let the present happy-go-lucky style of expansion go on, 
and add to our present difficulties'? Let us be wise and plan in ad- 
vance of settlement. 
City Beautiful. 
This is a term we are constantly bearing, mostly in terms of 
levity, or sarcasm, but it is possible that those who use the term do 
not know what it means, and have a very poor conception of what 
town-planners are aiming at. 
We are not theorists and idealists. Town planning involves es- 
sentially practical considerations. Its bearing on public health 
should be sufficient to ensure for it the attention it deserves in a 
country which recognises the value both of population and the 
efficiency of the individual units. 
We see in Australia, this “glorious land of open spaces,” our 
large cities congested with physically crushed and mentally warped 
men and women. 
We note the squalid environment, breeding crime and disease. 
We watch death stalking through the slums, and marking down the 
defenceless child, passing it out without even a fighting chance. In 
this “land of magnificent distances” Sydney has an infant death 
