Of the Indian railways some are owned and worked by the State, some are owned by the State and worked by companies, some are owned and worked by companies under contracts with the State. The companies that own and work their own lines are for the most part domiciled in England, and the evidence already taken before the Committee shows how little power is left by the London Boards to the local agents who manage them, and how often the interests of the public and of the country appear to be subordinated to the narrow view taken at home of the companies' own interests. But however flagrant the special shortcomings of the company-owned railways may be, the root of the evil common to all lies in the policy laid down by and for the Government of India, in whom the supreme control has always been vested as a professedly necessary consequence of the financial guarantees given by the State and the right of ultimate purchase reserved to it. That control, which has passed through many different incarnations in the course of the last half-century, has been exercised since 1905 by a Railway Board of three members outside of, but subordinate to, the Government of India. It is represented in the Viceroy's Executive Council by the Member for Commerce and Industry, but its real master and the ultimate authority in all matters of railway policy is and always has been the Finance Member of the Government of India, who in turn has to adapt himself to the exigencies of Whitehall. The Finance Member, who lays down the annual amount that can be allocated to railway expenditure out of revenue, cuts the cloth of the Railway Board in accordance not so much with the needs of the railways themselves as with the requirements of his annual budget. For when the yield of the Indian railways began to constitute an important source of Government revenue, the Finance Member, instead of devoting it to the equipment and expansion of railways, however essential to the future prosperity of the country, was easily prevailed upon to regard it, in part at least, as a convenient lucky-bag to draw upon, especially in difficult times, for meeting the demands of other departments, and especially of the Army Department, always the most insatiable of all. In the same way, however clear a case could be made out from the point of view of the railways for capital expenditure to be met by raising loans at home or in India, the decision was not based so much on the intrinsic merits of such an operation as on the immediate effect it was likely to have on the British or Indian money market in respect of other financial operations with which the Secretary of State was saddled. The result has been that before the war the Indian railways were kept on the shortest possible commons, and that having been inevitably starved during the war, without any reserves to fall back upon, they are clamouring to-day for financial assistance for the mere