It must be conceded that there is a certain feeling of dissatisfaction, superficial and indefinite though it be, to which advocates of nationalization, whose schemes originate in considerations which have no relation either to the excellence or to the imperfections of railway arrangements, are able to appeal in the pursuit of their aims. It is not that many people really think that our railways do not, as a whole, serve the public well, whatever individuals may say in moments of haste. Hut complaints are sufficiently numerous to have a real importance as an influence on public opinion. And, unfortunately, their influence is to a large extent independent of their justice. The existence of criticism, which, after all, is only another name for difference of opinion, is inevitable, and probably would be inevitable under the most perfect system of railway management which the world has seen or ever can see. State railways would not be immaculate. The nature of railway business lays it open, to an exceptional extent, to the unpopularity which unavoidably gathers round every institution on which there is universal dependence. Providence itself does not wholly escape unpopularity. No other industry is comparable with the railway industry in the close dependence upon it of the vast majority of the people. The necessity for transport services penetrates more frequently and more deeply into the lives and habits of the people than any of the other prime necessities of civilization. The need for transport is a tyranny. All tyrants are unpopular. And the tyranny of a need is apt to beget, by an illogical transposition of ideas, a dislike of those who are responsible for supplying the need. People are conscious of grievances, or, let us say, unsupplied wants. They cannot measure the range of possibility which limits the supply of those wants or remedies for those grievances. They constantly wish for the impossible, but have not sufficient knowledge to distinguish between the possible and the impossible. Defects which cannot be remedied are generally condemned with more emphasis than those which are due to mismanagement. It is irrelevant to consider whether the dissatisfaction to which I have referred is justified or not. Whether well or ill founded, it must be set down as one of the causes of the movement for nationalization. The second cause I would mention is a belief, growing from a suspicion into a conviction under the stimulus of repeated failures in control experiments, that it is impossible for any Government, by any legislative or executive action in any form, to exercise useful and effective control over railways. People turn in despair from ideas of regulation and control to ideas of ownership.