Every commercial traveller who knows the West, and every superficial observer of the flow of grain to the Lakes’ head, is aware that years and years before the G.T.P. hauled its first car of wheat into Fort William, the Canadian Northern avalanche of grain converged upon Port Arthur from branches which appeared upon the map like the fingers of a hand. In the year of the first G.T.P. car’s arrival at Fort William the Canadian Northern earned nearly twenty-one million dollars. If the Canadian Northern had remained a prairie road, doing business only between the Lakes and Mountains, it would never have been in Queer Street, but would have more than paid for operating costs, fixed charges and betterment requirements out of revenue, because it was the West’s own product to meet the West’s own needs. Neither as a prairie road, nor as a prairie-and-mountain road has the Grand Trunk Pacific ever earned its operating expenses. The only section which has shown more earnings than operating expenses, is the line between Winnipeg and Fort William, which was built as the National Transcontinental. That result has only been possible to this piece of line because Canadian Northern traffic is handed to it at Winnipeg, under the co-ordinating arrangements without which for many years to come the Grand Trunk Pacific, which was built at unprecedented expense per mile for a pioneer road, would resemble nothing so much as the seven lean kine of Joseph’s immortal dream. To a large extent the former National Transcontinental is being used as the old Canadian Northern harvesters’ second track between Winnipeg and Lake Superior. Why, then, did the Canadian Northern fall, and two great builders with it? The obvious but misleading guess is that the prosperous middle was bankrupted by the lean and voracious Montreal-Port Arthur and Edmonton-Vancouver ends. Ambition o’er-leaped itself and met the fate excessive leaping invites. The man who is a better biter than chewer will always choke. The guess and comment are plausible--much more plausible than what I believe is the true explanation of the debacle of Mackenzie and Mann, which was, finally, the war. There were other contributing causes, of course, but the real overwhelmer was Armageddon. Few men seemed to realize in 1911 and 1912 that the period of swift expansion which had given prosperity to all sorts of businesses in Canada was about to conclude. Hindsight is proverbially better than foresight. It is easy, even for statesmen, to realize now, that there had been too little increase in the basic productions of agriculture, and too much addition to manufacturing and other plants which could only flourish permanently on a constantly expanding fruition of the soil, along with steady development of forest and mining industries.