Forewarned as it was to some extent by the hurricane advance of the Hun, the Government was also forearmed in that it was empowered by the provisions of the Act of 1871 not merely to take over the railroads of the United Kingdom, but, should it be deemed expedient to do so, the plant thereof as well. The Government might even take possession of the plant without the railroad; though how the railways could have been maintained minus their plant, any more than the Fleet could have remained in commission minus its dockyards, is doubtless a problem that was duly considered by those who framed the wording of the Act in the year of grace 1871. However that may be, as soon as the really desperate nature of the struggle began to dawn upon the Government, and it was seen to be a case of "all or nothing," the then President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Runciman, M.P., was not slow to espy the latent, yet none the less patent, possibilities which surely existed within the practical domain of railway workshops. In certain circumstances it may be regarded as fortunate that not a few of those happy-go-lucky individuals, whose leaning is towards politics, are gifted with the convenient art of adapting themselves and their views to that particular quarter whence the wind happens to be blowing. "I must honestly confess," as this same Mr. Runciman had expressed himself when in 1907 he was Financial Secretary to the Treasury, "that when I see the armaments expanding it is gall and wormwood to my heart; the huge amount of money spent on the Army is a sore point with every one in the Treasury." Particularly galling, therefore, must have seemed the rate at which expenditure on armaments was increasing by leaps and bounds in 1914; yet so ingenuous is the manner in which politicians are calmly capable of effecting a complete _volte-face_, that on October 13th we find Mr. Runciman positively engaged in seeking out the late Sir Guy Calthorp, then General Manager of the London and North-Western Railway, and Mr. Bowen-Cooke, for the purpose of eliciting their views as to the extent to which the railway companies might be relied upon to assist the Government in spending still more huge amounts of money (incidentally thus adding a further dose of wormwood to his heart), especially in regard to the output of artillery.