British railways, when the record of that marvel of transportation is compiled, will share the honors with the ironclads of Britain’s navy and the liners of her mercantile marine. Southampton being the main port of departure, the performance of the London and Southwestern Railway, which has carried so many thousand Americans in pacific days from Waterloo Station to the ship’s side, is a case in point. I heard Sir H. A. Walker, the "Southwestern’s" general manager make before the American Luncheon Club in London the first announcement of the railways’ part in England’s military mobilization. With his subsequent permission, I was privileged to give the British public its first information on that subject. The L. & S. W. had been assigned the task of making ready for dispatch to Southampton within sixty hours three hundred and fifty trains of thirty cars each. It did the trick in forty-five hours. During the first three weeks of war there were dispatched to and unloaded at the ships’ sides seventy-three of such trains every fourteen hours. They arrived from the four quarters of the kingdom, and none of them was late. "I come from the land of ’big railway stunts,’" said Henry W. Thornton, the American general manager of the Great Eastern railway when Sir H. A. Walker had told this convincing story of British "hustle." "We think we are ’pulling off’ some feat when we handle G.A.R. encampments and national conventions, but what British railways accomplished in the ten days between August 7 and 17 last may fairly be claimed as a unique record in railway history." What Mr. Thornton modestly failed to add was that he himself, as a colleague presently bore testimony, had played a conspicuous rôle in the drama of British military mobilization. Certain inanimate things, almost as well known to Americans as Mr. Thornton, played big parts, too. The palatial _Mauretania_, with her _suites de-luxe_ battered into cargo-room for Tommy Atkins, and her big new sister, _Aquitania_, with only a maiden crossing or two to her credit, similarly knocked to pieces, made incessant trips back and forth between Southampton and other channel ports to Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk, landing in France on each occasion no less than five thousand British fighting-men, ready for death and glory. Each mother’s son of them carried with him this little personal message from Lord Kitchener: "You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience.