A good many people attempting this very difficult problem of regionalizing the railroads of New England have attempted to leave the Boston and Albany out of their calculations, which not only spoils the picture but makes the entire regional plan almost utterly senseless. Others doing the same thing have attempted to balance matters by giving the New Haven to the Pennsylvania, which is perhaps a little worse. That distinguished student of American railroads, Professor E. Z. Ripley of Harvard, who undertook recently a regionalization scheme at the behest of the Interstate Commerce Commission, fell into no such error. He gave New Haven to the Baltimore and Ohio, and I suspect did it knowing full well that the Pennsylvania, having been offered the New Haven long ago and having refused it, would probably not have a change of heart in the near future. In its recent close new traffic alliance with the New Haven--an alliance whose outward expression consists very largely of some new through trains and sleeping-car services from New England by way of the Hell Gate Bridge and the Pennsylvania Station in New York City--the Pennsylvania undoubtedly has all of the New Haven that it can easily digest. Broad Street cannot be anxious to undertake the management of the Litchfield branch in Connecticut, or the Chatham one down Cape Cod way. Yet I hear you asking Professor Ripley, if the Pennsylvania does not want to buy the New Haven, how much more so would the Baltimore and Ohio, whose terminals in New York are weak and whose finances generally are in a far more precarious condition, want to attempt the thing? Can the keen-minded Mr. Willard at Baltimore be more anxious than the keen-minded Mr. Rea at Philadelphia to undertake the management of jerk-water branches in Connecticut or in Rhode Island or down on Cape Cod? In answer to all of which a Harvard eye of deep wisdom would be winked. Mr. Ripley knows well that the New England railroad should be purely a regional railroad--or two regional railroads--and yet I think that he would be quite willing to embrace the suggestion of the Boston banker that its ownership--not an enviable honor to-day or apparently for many days to come--should be divided between the three or four or five trunk-lines that it serves.