I have quoted Lord Monkswell in some detail because his remarks, made upon the British railway situation eight years ago, are so pertinent and applicable to our American railroad situation of this moment. He has seen the rise and the decline of competition upon his home island. And we too have seen its rise and its decline, upon the North American continent. * * * * * Return for a final moment to the British regional grouping plan as it has finally been effected by Parliament; some of the many details are vital to us because they are details that before long we shall be compelled to face in the remaking of our own national railroad structure. The Railways Act over there, after outlining rather precisely the geography of the regional grouping, sets up an Amalgamation Tribunal, consisting of three commissioners, who will approve and confirm the amalgamation schemes submitted to them. This tribunal is to be a court of record and is to have an official seal. Its decisions are subject to a review by the Court of Appeal, whose decision is to be final, unless it gives leave to carry it up to the House of Lords itself. It is expected that the work of this tribunal will be finished early in 1923, so that the new groups may begin active operations upon July 1 of that year. At one time it was suggested that the entire scheme be made operative upon July 1, 1921; the whole thing was suggested by the minister of transport as early as June, 1920. But that was obviously far too short a time. The railway companies would have none of it. They wanted it to begin not before January 1, 1924, and have nearly had their own way in the matter. For it need not be supposed that the bill was adopted without contentions. These were many and some of them were bitter. The Scottish question was but one of several vexing sub-problems. A good many of the British railway men looked upon the rate return to come from the proper fixing of the tariff charges in each of the groupings as quite too low. The fact that it was the equal of 1913 has meant little or nothing to them. That year returned but 3.64 per cent. to the average British railway share, and some large holders of these securities felt that they should have a much bigger return upon their investments. Yet to go further into this vexing point would involve an intricate study of British railway capitalization. It is enough for our point now to say that it is large, extremely large, per mile as compared with our American capitalization. Those people who have made it their particular business to shout upon watered stock and bonds of our roads will have interesting food for thought if they will study the capitalization of railways overseas; particularly so if they will consider that the preliminary valuation reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission show many of our carriers as possessing an actual property value well in excess of the combined securities issued against it.