There were eight years between the outbreak of war and the departure of my colleagues and myself from the Canadian National Railways. That fateful period seems naturally to divide itself into three distinct phases: the labour immediately attributable to the war; the measures required to make the best of the general situation left by the war, and the methods by which it was endeavoured to reconcile the efficiency of private management with the essentials of responsibility to Parliament. The last first. As far as public policy was concerned, the situation into which a Board of Directors, newly appointed by the Government, entered was made for them by events which happily, perhaps, for them, were part of the war, as well as part of a railway problem of the first financial and administrative magnitude. We came into office when members of Parliament had something to think about besides jobs. Even if the word “politics” were not used here, readers would use it; for, after all, you cannot have a revolution in a nation’s railway affairs which depends on Parliamentary action, without political considerations entering into it. Besides the great interest of the whole body politic, which is statesmanship, the pull of the hungry partisan is sure to be felt, sooner or later. Except for the infinitesimal proportion of men to whom nothing in public service is so important as the chance to get their hands on some public post or property, I think the public sentiment west of Montreal was, and is, all for keeping politics out of all the railway administration for which Parliament became responsible by the taking over of the Canadian Northern, and the receivership of the Grand Trunk Pacific. During private ownership, the few attempts which were made to influence appointments by friends of Governments which had given guarantees had failed ignominiously. When the Canadian Northern became a National liability altogether, the war was almost at its worst. The acquisition of the system meant so much obligation that few supporters of the Government felt like making a party holiday out of the transaction. The war had for three years been the universal preoccupation, when, in 1917, party considerations were subordinated to the formation of a Union Government. From the point of view of starting with a clean slate, as far as the attentions of old-fashioned machine politicians were to be apprehended, conditions could not be more favourable for nationalizing thousands of miles of railway, hitherto privately directed. Indeed, the Government exercised its authority over the Canadian Northern, before the Union Government arrived, by appointing as directors: Mr. W. K. George of Toronto, Mr. William Christie of Winnipeg, and Mr. Harry Richardson of Kingston. This happened almost without Parliamentarians or the public waking up to its significance.