There is hardly any comparison between these trunk railroads of the Southeast and the lines that struggled so hard to handle the armies at the time of the Spanish-American War. They have been double-tracked for long distances, more generously supplied with locomotives and cars, although they are still quite a way behind their northern brethren in this regard. Still it would not be a very difficult matter in a national crisis to move great fleets of rolling stock from one corner of the land to another. By careful advance planning and a study of rail weights and bridges this would become a comparatively simple matter. Ignore, for the moment, the strategic value of the many railroads in the center of the land; forget the possibility of an army striking us upon our Atlantic coast. Let us turn our faces toward the west coast, toward the great stretch of barren and unprotected Pacific shore from British Columbia down to San Diego. And before we begin tracing strategic routes upon the map let us close our eyes and go back into history. Do you recall that inspiring picture in the old geographies of the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad--the two doughty locomotives, one facing west, the other east, with their cowcatchers gently touching, while a motley of distinguished guests are indulging in oratory and other things? Do you happen to recall why the Union Pacific was builded, why the national credit was placed behind its construction? Military necessity is the answer. The men who went before the Congress of the fifties and the sixties and who argued ably and well for the building of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States laid great stress upon this question of military necessity. "Only by the building of such a railroad as this," they argued, "can the Union be held absolutely indissoluble." So came the name of the road. Today one looks at the military necessity of the Union Pacific Railroad from another point of view. Now open your eyes. Look at your map and see that military value of this first great transcontinental railroad. Its chief eastern terminal is at Council Bluffs, on the bank of the Missouri River and but an overnight ride from Chicago, with which it is connected by six excellent railroads--most of them double-tracked. Its northerly main stem is double-tracked practically the entire distance to Ogden, Utah, an even thousand miles distant from the Missouri. A twin main stem runs from Cheyenne down to Denver and east to Kansas City, where it enjoys direct connections to St. Louis, Memphis, and the entire South. The North and East feed the road chiefly through its Council Bluffs gateway.