I have intentionally left out the first principle--"the most remunerative field must be selected"--not because I want to neglect it but because I mean to call more attention to it and treat it more fully. It is commonly known to financiers and railway men that a railway in a densely populated country from end to end is the best paying proposition, and a railway in a thinly settled country from end to end is the least paying one. And a railway in an almost unpopulated country like our projected lines will take a long time to make it a paying business. That is why the United States Government had to grant large tracts of public lands to railway corporations to induce them to build the Transcontinental lines to the Pacific Coast, half a century ago. Whenever I talked with foreign railway men and financiers about the construction of railways to Mongolia and Sinkiang, they generally got very shy of the proposition. Undoubtedly they thought that it is for political and military reasons only that such a line as the Siberian Railway was built, which traversed through a thinly populated land. But they could not grasp the fact which might be entirely new to them, that a railway between a densely populated country and a sparsely settled country will pay far better than one that runs from end to end in a densely populated land. The reason is that in economic conditions the two ends of a well populated country are not so different as that between a thickly populated country and a newly opened country. At the two ends of a well populated country, in many respects, the local people are self-supplying, excepting a few special articles which they depend upon the other end of the road to supply. So the demand and supply between the two places are not very great, thus the trade between the two ends of the railway could not be very lucrative. While the difference of the economic condition between a well populated country and an unpopulated country is very great. The workers of the new land have to depend upon the supplies of the thickly populated country almost in everything excepting foodstuffs and raw materials which they have in abundance and for disposal of which they have to depend upon the demand of the well populated district. Thus the trade between the two ends of the line will be extraordinarily great. Furthermore, a railway in a thickly populated place will not affect much the masses which consist of the majority of the population. It is only the few well-to-do and the merchants and tradesmen that make use of it. While with a railway between a thickly populated country and a sparsely settled or unsettled country, as soon as it is opened to traffic for each mile, the masses of the congested country will use it and rush into the new land in a wholesale manner. Thus the railway will be employed to its utmost capacity in passenger traffic from the beginning. The comparison between the Peking-Hankow Railway and the