The Uganda Railway has attracted a good deal of attention
during the week, partly owing to Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain having travelled by it some three hundred miles from the coast, and partly because of the debate in the Lords on a Bill to provide for the extra cost of the line. Mr. Chamberlain in his speech at the luncheon held at Nairobi, the furthest point he reached on the line, declared that he was much surprised to find the country so advanced. The railway he compared with the great building enterprises of ancient times, from which, he said, it differed in its enormous practical utility. He declared that what he had seen of East Africa confirmed him in his opinion "that the British were the dominant colonising race, destined by fate to make to blossom the waste places of the earth." In the House of Lords on Wednesday Lord Lans- downe produced, as it were, the bill for the splendid results which Mr. Chamberlain was observing on the spot. The estimates for the line had been exceeded by £2,500,000, and the total cost has been £5,500,000. Personally we think that we were wise to build the line, and believe that it will prove in the end a valuable Imperial asset, but we must never in our Imperial enthusiasm forget the cost of Empire.
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