The government railroads now furnish a complete service to virtually all parts of Canada, including the chief ports, from Halifax on the east coast to Vancouver and Prince Rupert on the west. The Canadian National Railways operate the Grand Trunk hotels and west coast steamers, and also the sixty-five ships of the Canadian Government Merchant Marine, which sail the seven seas. The curious situation exists of railroads owned by the government of Canada using two thousand miles of track in the United States. Nothing was thought of the Grand Trunk having terminals at Portland, Maine and New London, Connecticut, and Chicago, but the government ownership of these properties raises the possibility of conflict between the two countries in railroad matters. The government is fortunate in having in charge of the Canadian National lines Sir Henry Thornton, one of the great railroad men of the time. To him all Canada is looking to find the way out of the wilderness into which circumstances have brought the Dominion. Under his administration duplicated services are being eliminated, and the deficits have been greatly reduced. He is confident the lines can be made self-supporting. He said the other day: “The world expects the Canadian National Railways to fail. It does not believe that we can make them succeed. I do. I believe that if the army of workers lines up behind us, we shall achieve the greatest success the annals of transportation have ever recorded.” Though he is to-day a British subject, Sir Henry was born an American. His boyhood home was in Lafayette, Indiana. From St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire and the University of Pennsylvania, he went to the Pennsylvania Railroad. He rose to be manager of the Long Island Railroad, where he had much to do with the construction and operation of the Pennsylvania Terminal in New York City. England sent for him in 1914 to manage the Great Eastern Railway, which has the largest passenger traffic of any railroad in the world, and during the war he was in charge of all British army transportation in Europe. Sir Henry is not the first railroad genius America has furnished to Canada. Lord Shaughnessy, for many years the president and then the chairman of the Canadian Pacific, was born in Milwaukee. When he was a boy of fifteen he went to work for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. I once spent a morning with him in his office at Montreal, where he told me of his early career and his vision of the future of Canada and the great transportation system that he had raised up from infancy. His successor, E. W. Beatty, is the first Canadian-born president the Canadian Pacific has ever had.