Within seven days after he had accepted this billet, Willard was at work for the government. He bespoke for it at once the interest and cooperation of the heads of the other great railroads of America. He knew that in any national crisis the interest and the patriotism of these men was never to be doubted. And so he sought their cooperation and not in vain. A full dozen of the biggest railroad executives in the United States closed their desks and at Willard's suggestion came hurrying to Washington. When their conference was done, a definite plan for the service of the railroads in a time of great national stress had been begun--a program which the railroad executives then returned to study in detail. At the conference they were told of the great defense and offense plans of the War College for the part which the railroad must play in a national emergency. Some of the railroad presidents learned for the first time the designated mobilization centers all the way across the land, the equipment necessary for each, the movement and direction of troop and munition trains, from every one of them. It is gratifying to know that these railroad executives already are giving much time and thought to the use of our railroads in national defense. So is Major Charles Hine, who, like Herman Haupt, came out of West Point, perfected himself in military training and organization and gave his time after leaving the army to railroad training and organization. Hine started as a brakeman on the Erie Railroad, in order that he might study railroad operation from the bottom up--that he might eventually bring to the railroad some of the really good points of the army. He has since held high executive positions in many of the great railroad systems of the land--studying the problems of each until he knows the railroad map of this country as you and I know the fingers of our hands. The value of such a man to America in an emergency is not to be figured in dollars and cents. But to my own mind, the value of such a military reserve corps among the railroaders will be comparatively slight if its membership be confined merely to railroad executives. The qualities of patriotism and good Americanism are by no means confined to the higher-paid railroad men. Take a purely suppositious case--yet an entirely typical one: