This might not be the intention or the wish of all who think that our railways should be nationalized. Probably some extreme Socialists would like to transfer railways to the State without giving what, in our judgment, would be adequate compensation to existing owners. Their aim is the substitution of a new social polity for that which exists, in which antiquated ideas of private property would have no place. But that is only a phase of their creed which condemns it to sterility. It is not the small band of Socialist zealots, but the majority of the nation that we have to consider in estimating the risk of anything being done in the nature of confiscation. Those who join the party for nationalizing will, no doubt, find themselves in strange company. There can be little doubt that the movement up to the present has been mainly Socialistic. A trader, who advocates nationalization because he hopes that he might be able to transfer to somebody else, perhaps he does not very much care whom, some part of the burden of the charges which he has to pay for railway carriage, will find that his next neighbor at a meeting of the party is a man who has joined for quite other reasons, with the object, indeed, of ultimately seizing for the State some part of his neighbor, the trader's, property, which the latter was reckoning to increase at the expense of, amongst others, his neighbor the Socialist, through the plan of railway nationalization. But the homogeneity of the party need not concern us, nor the question whether each and every member of it would be actuated by a single-minded desire for the public good. The forces making for honesty and equity in the treatment of existing interests would, I think, so overwhelmingly outweigh the influences tending in a contrary direction that we need not complicate the question by importing into it a discussion as to whether adequate compensation should or would be paid to existing owners in the event of the State deciding to acquire their property. Fair and adequate compensation for existing interests may be taken for granted. But although compensation can be paid for property, it cannot be paid to the general community who would suffer in the event of the administration and operation of railways under State management being less efficient than under private management. If a mistake be made, all would suffer, and their sufferings would not, and could not, be mitigated by compensation in any form. It may be useful at the outset to consider what has led to the question of railway nationalization in this country being discussed.