Here then are four railways created out of fifty-four--some 24,500 miles of line as compared with the 27,000 miles of French railway. The groupings have followed the lines that I have just shown and take the names of the Southern; the Northeastern, the Eastern, and the East Scottish; the Western; and the Northwestern, Midland, and West Scottish groups respectively. The smaller and comparatively unimportant lines of the United Kingdom fall easily into some one of these four great regions. For a time Scotland itself represented a rather perplexing problem. The energetic young British minister of transport, Sir Eric Geddes, stood stoutly for the retention of all the Scottish railways in a separate, distinct, and strongly unified group. In this he was opposed. The old-time competitive idea that there should be at least two separate and rival routes from London up into Scotland--the one on the east coast and the other on the west coast of Britain--would not down. Geddes gave up. Then for a time he proposed a generous compromise in the form of two separate Scotch groups, one upon each side of the island and connecting with the Eastern (English) and the Northwestern and Midland groups at York and Carlisle respectively. But even in this he was beaten. Scotland lost her railway autonomy. Her lines will be merged and as entities forever lost in the sweep of the two larger groups of the entire kingdom. Geddes has stood in his position in regard to the Scottish railways for the regional plan in its purest form. His theory was excellent. But it had to give way to hard-headed practice. It often so happens. Remember always, if you will, that railroad competition has been a great god in Britain as well as in the United States. Yet competition is not to be too hardly judged, even by the loftiest of idealists. It has its good points, and they are many. Most of the fine excellences of our railroad service in this country were built up in its hottest competitive period. That is irrefutable. It is entirely probable that if we had not had that competitive period we should not have had a service even comparable with the high standard of excellence that we reached a decade ago. The point is that within the last generation genuine competition has ceased to exist between our railroads; the sham of it that remains is a fearful drag upon any really economical operation of them to-day. Only a few years ago Lord Monkswell, the distinguished British student of railway problems, said: