a civil service with strong _esprit de corps_ and permeated with old traditions, leading them to regard themselves as the servants of the king rather than as candidates for popular favor. An American statesman, Charles Francis Adams, wrote as follows more than 30 years ago: "In applying results drawn from the experience of one country to problems which present themselves in another, the difference of social and political habit and education should ever be borne in mind. Because in the countries of continental Europe the state can and does hold close relations, amounting even to ownership, with the railroads, it does not follow that the same course could be successfully pursued in England or in America. The former nations are by political habit administrative, the latter are parliamentary. In other words, France and Germany are essentially executive in their governmental systems, while England and America are legislative. Now the executive may design, construct or operate a railroad; the legislative never can. A country therefore with a weak or unstable executive, or a crude and imperfect civil service, should accept with caution results achieved under a government of bureaus. Nevertheless, though conclusions cannot be adopted in the gross, there may be in them much good food for reflection." CONTROL BY DEMOCRACY, OR OWNERSHIP BY AUTOCRACY. I am inclined to think that the effect of the evidence is that the further a government departs from autocracy and develops in the direction of democracy, the less successful it is likely to be in the direct management of railroads. Belgium is far from being a pure democracy; but compared with Prussia it is democratic, and compared with Prussia its railroad management is certainly inferior. Popular opinion in Belgium seems at present to be exceedingly hostile to the railroad administration; official documents assert that, while the service to the public is bad, the staff are scandalously underpaid, and yet that the railroads are actually not paying their way. There was, it is true, till recently an accumulated surplus of profits carried in the railroad accounts, but the official figures have been recently revised, and the surplus is shown to be non-existent. The Swiss experiment is too new to justify any very positive conclusions being drawn from it; but this much is clear: the state has had to pay for the acquisition of the private lines sums very much larger than were put forward in the original estimate; the surplus profits that were counted on have not been obtained in practice; the economies that were expected to result from unification have not been realized; the expenditure for salaries and wages has increased very largely; and so far from there being a profit to the Federal government, the official statement of the railroad administration is that, unless the utmost care is exercised in the future, the railroad receipts will not cover the railroad expenditure.