"Who made the law that nincompoops and asses Should 'cushy' jobs, immune from risk, infest, While other 'blokes,' undaunted--aye in masses,-- Naught asking, bit the dust, and so--'went west'? Who made the law?" CHAPTER X 1914-1918 PASSENGERS AND GOODS "Unless we had order, unless we had certainty, in the moving of large masses, the day of battle, which might come, would be to us a day of disaster."--Colonel McMurdo, late Inspector-General of the Volunteer Forces, January 9th, 1865. _Der Tag_, which came on August 4th, 1914, was not fated after all, as we know, to be a day of disaster. That it was not so is perhaps attributable in the main to two causes. "Miraculous" is the manner in which escape from disaster has been described; but as we have already seen (and of this fact we cannot remind ourselves too often), the miracle was performed primarily and essentially by the loss of those "many thousands of brave men whose sacrifice we deplore, while we regard their splendid gallantry and self-devotion with unstinted admiration and gratitude." A secondary, but by no means inconsiderable, cause contributory to the successful working of the miracle lay in the fact that we did possess the "order," the "certainty," in regard to the moving--not exactly of "large masses" in the more recently accepted meaning of the term, but at any rate--of that part of the Army which was detailed for home defence, and of the six divisions of which the original Expeditionary Force was composed, and which were flung across the Channel to assist in stemming the initial German onrush. And it is with regard to this "order," this "certainty," and the attendant successful working of the railways that the ensuing pages are concerned. We have already traced in some degree of detail the antecedents of the Railway Executive Committee, that body of distinguished civilian railway experts, who, from the time that the Government assumed, under provisions of the Act of 1871, nominal control of the railways, became, and throughout the war remained, responsible to the Government for the maintenance and the efficient working of the entire railway systems of the British Isles; and in order to acquire some insight into the amazing and complex detail involved in this efficient working, we cannot very well do better than probe a few of the more salient facts concerning the London and North-Western Railway, which, on the outbreak of hostilities, and appropriately enough, was deputed to act as the "Secretary" Company to the Western and Eastern Commands and afterwards to the Central Force, that is to say, the Company specified by the Army Command Headquarters, for the purpose of making arrangements with the other railway companies concerned in the Commands named for the main troop movements during the first two months of the war.