Reviewing the Railways
Sir Eustace Missenden is not leaving the post of Chairman of the Railway Executive in disgust. The letters which he exchanged with Lord Hurcomb, the Chairman of the British Transport Com- mission, and Mr. Barnes, the Minister of Transport, contained no complaints. Sir Eustace undertook to supervise the unification of the four main line railways ; now, at the end of three years, he feels that his task of laying a solid foundation is done. But the end of one stage only means. the beginning of another, and it has always been understood that the organisation would be reviewed after three years of nationalisation. That review will, presumably, now begin, if the Transport Commission can spare the time from all its other labours, of which it never fails to remind the public in its annual reports, and which are indeed of almost superhuman size and difficulty. But before it begins, the public, which is supposed to take an interest in these affairs, might consider whether any of the complications of the task are unnecessary. Sir Eustace Missenden is first of all a great railwayman, and of the principal questions which he has handled—and which he listed in his letter to Lord Hurcomb—he mentioned tile integration of transport (which of course covers other means than rail) last. He did not enlarge on the subject, and everybody knows that very little has been done about it. But there need be no complaints about that. It can be argued that the whole history of the British railways has tended towards unification. It cannot be convincingly argued that the history of all British transport—rail, road, canal, sea and air—tends to anything of the sort. In fact this over-ambitious aim makes things more, not less, difficult for the Transport Commission and the Railway Executive, and the difficulty is unnecessary. But Mr. Barnes in his letter gave integration a much more prominent place than either Sir Eustace Missenden or Lord Hurcomb. And it is Mr. Barnes who has most power.
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