He succeeded in placing a substantial proportion of the securities with a great financial house. A first issue of three and a half million pounds was taken by the public, less than three weeks before the formal declaration of war against Germany. The financial house did not repudiate its bargain, but there was no prospect of raising money in London for Canadian railway construction in August, 1914, or subsequently, during the war. Indeed, the British Government prohibited any issue of any description from any of the Dominions, while hostilities lasted. It would have been unwise to stop work in Canada because of a war the duration of which was not foreseen. Though we were restricted in pace, construction went on, the money for which was obtained in New York, through more short term notes, with the securities unsold in London as collateral. Guaranteed as the collateral securities were, they could only realize about sixty per cent. of their face value. This and the higher rate of interest, had the effect of considerably raising the cost of capital required for construction. When, to inaugurate the linking of Quebec and Vancouver by the Canadian Northern, an excursion of Parliamentarians from the St. Lawrence to Burrard Inlet was arranged in the fall of 1915, it was clear that New York must be permanently drawn upon, if the situation, believed to have been finally saved at midsummer, 1914, were not to descend into disaster. Sir William Mackenzie, at an age when chiefs of the C.P.R. retire on their highly deserved pensions, faced a heavier task than anything that confronted Stephen, Smith, or Van Horne in the C.P.R.’s most trying period. The Canadian Government, with London still an inexhaustible reservoir, was the C.P.R.’s last and safest resort. Mackenzie saw a world war engrossing every energy of the Dominion, and rendering London financially impotent to him. For sheer tenacity, for courage which attacked the most formidable obstacles without a quail; for capacity to bring things to pass, I think Canada has not yet begotten his equal. The marvel is, not that he and Sir Donald Mann could not finish all that they had begun; but that they carried it so nearly to the triumph, hope of which had been like a pillar of cloud to them in the days whereon the multitude applauded, and a pillar of fire in the night of difficulty such as they had endured when the non-Canadian was preferred before them, and when the panic of the fall of 1907 smote North America. Beginning as an unknown venturer into Lombard street, Sir William Mackenzie had brought to Canada over three hundred million dollars for Canadian Northern Railways, which had made possible an amount of development of all kinds, the subtraction of which from Canada’s economic content to-day would leave the nation poor indeed. But, while this was happening, the star of Canada had been in the ascendant, and it seemed that British money had at last developed an unchangeable westward impetus.