He is equally indebted to Mr. C. J. Bowen-Cooke, C.B.E., for permission to reproduce extracts from his work "British Locomotives"; also to Mr. L. W. Horne, C.B.E., M.V.O., and his personal staff at Euston, who so kindly supplied statistics in regard to war-time traffic. Last, but not least, are due the Author's thanks to Mr. L. J. Maxse, Editor and Proprietor of the _National Review_, whose readiness to pen a few prefatory remarks is now most gratefully acknowledged. Whilst in no way seeking to underrate the intelligence, or to disavow the knowledge, already possessed by those readers who may be sufficiently patient to bear with him, the Author would beg that at least they may not see cause to classify him with those who "wishing to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish." CREWE, 1920. PREFACE The British cannot be accused, even by their bitterest critics, of blowing their own trumpet. Indeed, they fail in the opposite direction, and, as a general rule, carry their modesty to a point when it positively ceases to be a virtue, because it causes credit to go where it is not due. If we are unpopular as a nation--of which we are continually assured, though whether we are more disliked than other nations may be doubted--it is certainly not on account of boasting by our men of action and achievement. Occasionally, it is true, we suffer under the extravagant claims of Talking Men--chiefly politicians--who are possibly inspired by the apprehension that unless they were their own advertisers mankind would remain oblivious and therefore ungrateful as regards the services they are supposed to have rendered. The events of the Great War will gradually emerge in proper perspective, and things will then seem somewhat different to what they do to-day, when there is a certain and inevitable reaction which both enables pretenders to pose as saviours of Society, and encourages us to overlook much of which we may be legitimately proud because it has demonstrated afresh to a world that was forgetting it that the British are essentially a great people with a genius for everything appertaining to war, however lacking in the supreme art of making durable peace. In that day we shall want to know a great deal more than we do at present concerning the origin of a conflict which has been to some extent obscured by interested parties on both sides of the North Sea who have enveloped the palpitating pre-war crisis in a curtain of misrepresentation. It is common ground that Germany willed the war for which she was super-abundantly prepared, while Great Britain willed peace for which she was no less eager. Not for the first time in our history were we taken completely unawares--neither Government nor public having the faintest inkling of any impending storm, still less that civilisation was on the eve of a cataclysm of which it would feel the effects for more than one century.